School fee hike issue: Vinod Tawde sitting on ‘pro-parents’ recommendations for last five months

Mumbai: The value of ‘education’ can never be overstated: This saying seems to have become irrelevant given the ‘commercialisation’ of education that institutes charge from parents under the guise of various fees. This commercialisation has been done to such an extent that some schools literally expel students on non-payment of fees.

Not only this, the current functioning of educational institutions often leads to dispute between parents and school managements. Taking a cognizance of a rise in such disputes, the Maharashtra government had last year constituted a judicial commission to study the Maharashtra Educational Institutions (Regulation of Collection of Fee) Act, 2011. The commission under the chairmanship of former Justice (retd.) V G Palshikar submitted a series of recommendations and draft amendments to the Act in December 2017. The state government, however, doesn’t seem interested in giving some respite to the parents.

Education Minister Vinod Tawde, who had constituted the Commission, was supposed to table the recommendations before the Legislative Assembly, during the budget session, held in February this year. The Minister, however, neither tabled the draft amendments nor did he undertake any steps to lessen parents’ woes.

Speaking exclusively to the Free Press Journal, Justice Palshikar said, “The Commission submitted the draft amendments to the Minister in December itself and the same was to be tabled before the assembly in budget session, which was held recently. “I fail to understand why the report wasn’t discussed in the House given the fact that it was submitted two months in advance. I believe the report was to be discussed in February’s budgetary session and after deliberations the same was to be enforced by June, the new academic year,” he added.

Despite several attempts to reach out to minister Tawde, who had in December told a national daily that the recommendations would be implemented “soon”, he was unavailable for his comment. The 12-member Commission, including parents and bureaucrats, had recommended increasing parents’ rights in fee disputes. The parents can now approach a statutory Divisional Fee Revision Committee (DFRC) — this right was reserved for school managements, till now. Apart from this, parents’ representation has been doubled in the PTA (Parent-Teacher Association) an executive body, whose approval is must for a fee hike.

Currently, PTAs are believed to be largely management-friendly. The Commission has received complaints that some PTAs were constituted in a way that they would favour the school management. One of the major modifications put forth by the Commission is that the school managements can only hike fees by 15%, every two years and the right to appeal to the statutory DFRC, if higher fees are not approved by parents. The Act, which is yet to be modified, has been effective since December 2014 and requires private schools’ managements to put forth proposed fees for the PTA’s approval, six months before the start of the new season.