The Committee constituted by the State government to submit a report on regulation of fee in private recognised educational institutions will submit its report by month-end, said Deputy Chief Minister and Education Minister Kadiyam Srihari here on Monday.
He urged parents not to be carried away by the name of the institution and admit their children by paying lakhs of rupees. The government would come out with a fresh list of affiliated institutions before March 2018 and information would be displayed in all the districts. Institutions were instructed not to give admissions without affiliation and parents too should be cautious. Government was determined to regulate fee collected by the institutions, he asserted.
Raising the issue in the Question Hour in the Legislative Council, Leader of the Opposition Mohd Ali Shabbir said exorbitant fee collected by private and corporate schools and junior colleges was an issue of serious concern for parents. Contrary to the norms, some institutions already opened admissions for the next academic year before the government could review the affiliation process.
Parents from middle and lower middle classes were forced to pay about ₹ 1 lakh as donation for classes I to V, ₹ 2 lakh for VI to IX and ₹ 75,000 for Class X in the name of building fund and other heads and government had no control over these managements, he said.
The government, on the lines of engineering and other professional colleges, should categorise schools and junior colleges based on quality to give relief to parents who were forced to take loans to get admission for their children. Though the issue was raised over the last three and a half years, the government could do precious little, he said.
Acknowledging the concern, the Minister said though earlier GOs were issued to regulate fee by the Government in the combined State, managements had obtained stay orders. The committee headed by former Osmania University Vice-Chancellor T. Tirupathi Rao had held several meetings with the managements and parents associations and sought their views and suggestions and sought information regarding their fee and expenditure for the past two years to analyse the situation before giving its final recommendations.
Meanwhile, the government inspected 162 schools and issued notices to those failing in following norms for cancellation of affiliation. Here too the institutions obtained court stay orders, he said.