The Madras High Court Bench here has directed officials in the School Education Department to ensure that private schools do not collect fees more than what had been fixed for individual institutions, depending upon their infrastructural facilities, by the Private Schools Fee Determination Committee.
A Division Bench comprising Justices S. Nagamuthu and M.V. Muralidaran passed the order while disposing of a public interest litigation petition filed by an alumnus of a private higher secondary school in Tiruchi accusing the management of collecting excess fee from students studying between Class VI and XII.
The petitioner, L. Swaminathan, had accused the school of collecting additional fee under the head of ‘Special Fee’ in contravention of a circular issued by the Director of School Education on October 18, 2013 against such a practice and sought a direction to the management to refund the excess fee collected from the students.
On the other hand, a Government Advocate informed the court that the Chief Educational Officer in Tiruchi had conducted a detailed enquiry on the charges levelled by the petitioner against the school management and found that there was no such collection of fees illegally.
PIL closed
The judges recorded the statement and closed the PIL petition.
They, however, observed that the authorities should ensure that there was no collection of any excess fee from school students illegally in the future.
