– Autar Nehru (Delhi)

Delhi state’s newly elected bjp government’s Delhi School Education (Transparency in Fixation and Regulation of Fees) Act, 2025 passed by the legislative assembly on August 8, is being widely proclaimed as the final solution to the issue of regulating private school fees in the national capital after decades of failed regulatory efforts.

Building on years of incremental reforms — from the Delhi School Education 1973 Act to nine reports of the Justice Anil Dev Singh Committee (2009-2017) — the new law introduces school-level committees for setting tuition fees covering all 1,700 private schools in Delhi. Earlier, fees regulation efforts were mainly confined to 300 unaided independent private schools sold land at concessional prices by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA).

Under the new Act, school managements are required to propose fees chargeable for three years at a time. The proposal has to be approved or amended by School-Level Fee Regulation Committees (SLFRCs) to be constituted in every private school before the start of the academic year.

Under a broad-based participatory model, SLFRCs will comprise a school management representative as chairperson, school principal (secretary), three teachers (selected by draw of lots), five parents (including two women, selected by draw of lots), one SC/EBC community representative and one representative from the state government’s Directorate of Education (DoE). After formation of SLFRCs, the 13-member committee is obliged to approve (or amend) the fee proposed by the management before August 31 every year.

S.8 of the Act helpfully provides guidelines under which SLFRCs should deliberate and set private school fees. Among the factors: location of school; infrastructure quality; education standard of school; admin and maintenance expenditure; yearly increments and “reasonable revenue surplus for the purpose as may be prescribed.”

Under the Act, District Fee Appellate Committees will adjudicate objections filed by Aggrieved Parents Groups, the Management and the Parents Teachers’ Associations on the issue of fees set by SLFRCs. Even further appeal may be made to a Revision Committee, whose decision will be conclusive and binding on the parties for three academic years. The Bill prohibits direct access to civil courts. Complaints have to be adjudicated by exclusively district and state-level Revision Committees.

“This law makes the education system more transparent and accountable by preventing uncontrolled fee increases in schools. Information about this legislation is being communicated to parents so that they can be aware of their rights and ensure that their children receive quality education at reasonable fees. Our aim is to regulate fees (increases) rather than set any cap. After studying the existing mechanisms to regulate fees in states like Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, we have formulated this law,” said Ashish Sood, Delhi state education minister addressing a Parents Town Hall organised on August 14. 

Unsurprisingly, private school managements aren’t jubilant about this comprehensive fees regulation initiative. “Ninety-nine percent of Delhi’s private schools are small and medium budget schools whose fees aren’t at all comparable to the 1 percent of high-end schools, most of which are sited on land grants from DDA. Therefore our fees don’t need regulation. Most of us don’t have the time or resources to comply with the committee norms prescribed by the Act as we operate on thin margins. Now that the law applies equally to us, we are waiting for rules and watching how the scenario evolves in the coming months,” says Dr. Chandrakant Singh, National General Secretary of Private Land Public Schools Trust, a prominent private schools advocacy organisation and Chairman, Ideal Radiant Public School, Delhi.

Delhi-based advocate and long-time private school fees regulation activist Ashok Agarwal is also dismayed by the lengthy bureaucratic provisions of the Act. “Under s.21 of the RTE Act, 2009, School Management Committees dominated by parents of in-school children could have been empowered to set school fees. There’s no need to establish a new three-layered structure to do the same job,” says Agarwal.

Be that as it may even as state governments countrywide driven by the impulse to assuage the powerful middle class which foolishly invites government interference in private education (see EW cover story https://educationworld.in/private-school-fees-beware-government-regulation-trojan-horse/), Bengaluru-based advocate Divya Balagopal, who has established an excellent reputation in the education laws domain, says that the law laid down by a full bench of the Supreme Court in its landmark judgement in T.M.A. Pai Foundation Case (2002) is the last word on the issue of government regulation of fees levied by private independent education institutions.

“In my view all such school fees fixation Acts are regulatory overreach and do not conform with the principles laid down by the Supreme Court in its well-considered judgement in the T.M.A. Pai Case. In that judgement the apex court directed that fees should be ‘reasonable’ and reasonableness is context driven. In my opinion as long as fees levied are reasonable and commensurate with the quality of education provided, government cannot directly or indirectly regulate the fees of private unaided education institutions. All such legislation is likely to be struck down by the judiciary,” says Balagopal.

Nevertheless, driven by populism and middle class pressure, instead of raising teaching-learning standards in government schools to the level of private institutions, state governments are enacting legislation to regulate fees of private schools promoted by citizens from post-tax savings. If such legislation is struck down, politicians can always blame the judiciary.