Like a hardy annual ritual, the higher tuition fees issue has returned to haunt school mana-gements and parents alike in Indias national capital. Last April, the generous award of the Sixth Pay Commission (2008) which jacked up the pay packages of government school teachers by 40 percent (with retros-pective effect from January 2006), obliged the capitals top private schools to follow suit and hike tuition fees commensurately, and provoked a storm of protests and litigation. On August 7 last year, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the right of the Delhi state government to regulate the tuition and other fees of unaided private schools under the Delhi School Education Act, 1973. Although the courts judgement didnt rule out the right of school managements to raise tuition fees, it held that prior approval of the state government is necessary.On the eve of the commencement of the new academic year, perhaps in anticipation of a flood of applications from private unaided schools to approve higher tuition fees in an inflationary environment, on April 16 the state government issued a circular making it mandatory for school managements to get prior clearance of fee hikes from their parents associations. While parents associations welcomed the circular, school managements were quick to find fault with the directive. The circular is ridiculous since every schools management committee has a parent and government nominee. Therefore when a school issues a tuition fees increase notice, government and parents are a party to it, says R.C. Jain, president of the Delhi State Public Schools Managements Association. Meanwhile, the All India Parents Association led by militant lawyer-activist Ashok Agarwal, who has accessed the balance sheets of several schools which show comfortable surpluses, has made the data the basis for filing yet another petition in the Delhi high court challenging the constitutional validity of a 11.02.2009 circular of the director of education of the Delhi state government permitting unaided recognised private schools to hike tuition and development fees with retrospective effect from January 1, 2006. It is submitted that the circular is illegal, unconstitutional, irrational, discriminatory, arbitrary, unjust and violative of Articles 14, 21, 21-A and 38 of the Constitution of India read together with the high courts judgement in Delhi Abhibhavak Mahasangh v. Union of India and Others (AIR 1999 Delhi 124), in which the division bench laid down the criteria according to which fees should be determined by unaided recognised private schools, says Agarwal. The petition is scheduled for hearing on May 21. According to Jain, the recurring arguments about tuition fees increase can be put to rest by amending s.10 of the Delhi School Education Act, 1973 which mandates teachers pay parity between government and private schools. Its the obligation of private school managements to pay their teachers government scales that has made the fees issue ugly. While government gets money from taxes, cess and other sources, for private schools the only income is from tuition fees which have to be increased to meet the bigger wage bills. If this pay…
