In the western seaboard state of Maharashtra — India’s most industrialised state — the tuition fees of government and private aided schools are prescribed annually by the state government. In 2011, against the backdrop of parents complaining against arbitrary fee hikes by the state’s private unaided schools, the state government enacted the Maharashtra Educational Institutions (Regulation of Fee) Act, 2011 (MEI Act) under which private school managements must seek approval from the executive committees of their Parent Teacher Association (PTA) for any fee hike six months before the start of a new academic year. In May 2017, following further protests by the state’s powerful lobby of middle class parents, who shun free-of-charge government schools in favour of private schools for their progeny, against “profiteering” by private schools, the state government constituted a nine-member committee under retired high court judge V.J. Palshikar to examine this charge. The expert committee comprising government officials and an equal number of parents and school representatives submitted its report in December 2017. The committee proposed that the executive committees of PTAs decreed by the MEI Act co-opt an extra member representing parents dislodging the parents-teachers equilibrium stipulated by the Act. On November 26, the four-year-old BJP-Shiv Sena government amended the MEI Act, 2011, under which tuition fees of private unaided K-12 schools are governed, to include this recommendation. Several enlightened provisions of the amended MEI Act, 2011 which became law in 2014 after protracted discussions and debate, make it a model for other state governments confronted with continuous demands and agitations of middle class parents who ill-advisedly call for government regulation of the country’s estimated 320,000 unaided, i.e, financially and administratively independent K-12 schools. S.4 of the Act makes it mandatory for every private school to establish a Parent-Teacher Association — a long-standing demand of EducationWorld — comprising the principal/headmaster as chairperson, a parents’ representative as vice principal, a secretary (from among teachers), two joint secretaries (parents) and members (one parent and one teacher from every standard). The PTA in turn is mandated to elect an executive committee by lottery of every teacher and parent willing to serve on it. In class I-X private schools, the number of executive committee members aggregates 25. In class I-XII schools, 29 members. The MEI Act stipulates that tuition fees proposed for the next academic year by the governing board/management are required to be approved by the PTA executive committee (s.6 (3)). Moreover s.6 (5) states that if the difference between the tuition fees proposed by the management and PTA committee is less than 15 percent, the tuition fee for the next year shall be the fee proposed by the executive committee. However, if the difference is more than 15 percent, the management has the right to appeal to a five-member Divisional Fee Regulatory Committee (DFRC) chaired by a retired district judge under s.7 of the Act. And under s.12 (2) the tuition fee adjudicated by the DFRC is binding upon the management for a period of two academic years.…
