Fee hike: Parents urge Tawde to intervene

Nashik: A delegation of 10 parents of students studying in Ashoka Universal School met minister of school education (cabinet) Vinod Tawde on Monday and sought his intervention in the alleged fee hike case by the school management.
The parents asked the minister to issue a notice to the school seeking explanation for the alleged fee hike, besides appealing him to take appropriate action against the management after verifying the documents.
Meanwhile, five protesting parents met the education officers at the zilla parishad, and five others visited the office of the deputy director of education.
The parents have alleged that the school has hiked the term fee, which is not as per the rules. According to NGO Forum Against Commercialisation of Education (FACE) and the protesting parents, the tuition fee and term fee charged by the school authorities were not proportionate.
As per the Maharashtra Regulation of Fee Act 2011, a school cannot increase the fees in two years and secondly. Besides, term fee is charged as one month's tuition fees; which means that with two term fees charged annually, the amount should be tuition fees of two months. But the school is charging almost six months' fee as term fee, the agitators pointed out.Chetan Deore, one of the parents who is part of the delegation that visited the education minister said, "The education officers, including primary education officer Parvin Ahire, were called by the minister and asked to issue notice to the school. They were asked to study all the documents of the school and take appropriate action against the management."
"On May 25, we enquired with education officer Ahire as to why he had not given the letter to the school yet. The letter was finally handed over to the school authorities on Monday," added Deore.
The parents have alleged that the school has hiked fees by 93%.
But joint secretary of Ashoka Schools Shrikant Shukla countered their allegation claiming that the hike was as per the Maharashtra Fee Regulation Act, December 2014, and approved by the executive body of the parents and teachers association. Besides, the Bombay high court had given an interim order on December 23 last for the writ petition of the Association of School Owners, Mumbai, against the Fee Regulation Act that schools can increase 15% from last year's fees, he added.
Deore said the court had quashed the interim order on April 10, asking schools to follow the Fee Regulation Act 2014.
Responding to the statement, Shukla said, "The fee hike has been only 15% as per the court's interim order on December 23, 2015 for the writ petition of Association of School Owners, Mumbai, against the Fee Regulation Act that says that schools can increase 15% fees from last year's amount. The April 10 order is specifically for Billabong School. We also got a letter on May 7 from deputy director of education, Pune, Ram Jadhav stating that we can hike fees by 15%." Deputy director of education N B Autade was unavailable to comment due to some personal reasons. An education officer said, "We were asked to issue a notice to the school, which we have."