Some Hyderabad schools charging Rs 10 lakh for admission to LKG
Revelation comes after an HC-ordered survey was conducted by the school education department.
In some reputed international schools in Hyderabad, a parent will have to shell out around Rs 10 lakh for their child’s admission into LKG. This is apart from the regular monthly tuition and other fees that range around Rs 40,000. These startling facts were revealed during a special survey conducted by the school education department (DSE) of the Telangana government recently.
The state government was forced to conduct this survey in March on the directive of the High Court, which is now hearing a petition filed by the Hyderabad School Parents’ Association (HSPA), objecting to the spiralling amount of money collected by private international schools. As the schools are fully unaided, they are not bound by the fee norms of the state government. There are about 55 big international schools associated with global school boards located in the UK, Germany, Canada and Australia and another 170 top private unaided schools which follow ICSE and CBSE syllabus. These schools are not governed by the DSE of the state.
In Hyderabad, there is intense competition among the schools to woo elite parents. As it is difficult to get a seat in established and reputed schools, these new worldclass schools are filling the demand. But on Monday a division bench headed by acting Chief Justice Dileep B. Bhosale and Justice A.V. Sesha Sai directed the government to come up with plans to regulate fees in these schools as their actions are “against the principle of universal education and implementation of Right to Education Act”.
Telangana Deputy Chief Minister Kadiam Srihari told The Sunday Guardian that “We are shocked to find that parents are forced to shell out amounts more than what engineering and medicine stu- dents pay for their children’s elementary education.” The minister said that a high-level committee would be formed to monitor the admission process and the fee structure in private unaided schools. “We will be writing to the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, too, in this regard and take their help to set things right,” he said.
Education principal secretary Ranjeev R. Acharya and director of school education G. Kishan held a meeting to prepare a report that would be presented to the High Court on Sunday, 24 July, when the matter comes up for next hearing. L. Ravichandra, who argued for the private unaided schools’ managements, said that these educational institutions were forced to collect higher fees in view of the stringent norms fixed by the affiliating boards in creating physical and human infrastructure. “Growing land costs on the city outskirts and huge salaries to teachers are the main reason for high fees,” he explained. However, A. Ravi Kumar, HSPA representative and one of the petitioners, told this newspaper that “If the government converts all of its schools into English medium and improves physical infrastructure, the demand for private education will go down.”
The much hyped Private Member’s Bill moved by Congress MP K.V. P. Ramachandra Rao failed to come up for discussion in Rajya Sabha on Friday, thanks to the din in the House over AAP member Bhagwant Mann’s controversial video recording of the Parliament premises. The Bill seeking special status for Andhra Pradesh has been pending before the Upper House since the last budget session.
The Bill is supposed to come up for debate next Friday, but it is unlikely to be taken up in view of the conflicting stands by parties from Andhra Pradesh. All major parties including the ruling Telugu Desam Party and opposition YSR Congress have extended their support to the Bill, while Congress, which has some members in the RS has even issued a whip to its members to back it.
The two parties have been forced to extend support to the Private Member’s Bill moved by Ramachandra Rao, who is popularly known as KVP in AP, as the special status issue has be-