7 lakh capitation fee in schools shocks Hyderabad Chief Justice.

The Hyderabad High Court has expressed shock over certain private schools collecting a onetime fee (OTF) of up to ₹7 lakh per student during admission and said that the time had come to regulate school fees in Hyderabad. The bench was hearing a PIL filed by the powerful Hyderabad Schools Parents Association (HSPA) challenging the OTF as it is collected over and above the regular fee.

"If you want your people to flourish, you should start with schools and not colleges," said the bench of acting Chief Justice Dilip B Bhosale and Justice A V Sesha Sai. "There is a need to bring in regulatory mechanism to stop this ridiculous practice of OTF," Justice Bhosale said.

The counsel for HSPA, Kalpana Ekbote told the court that the OTF is nothing, but banned capitation fee now brought in with a new name.

Justice Bhosale wondered how parents from lower middle class would be able to afford such a huge fee and brushed aside a justification from the counsel for Hyderabad Public School that they are raising fee only to pay UGC scales to their teachers. "Don't justify your conduct," the CJ said.

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"There is a GO that allows schools to collect such fee, but it should not cross ₹6,000," said S Niranjan Reddy, another counsel who appeared for the protesting parents. "In families where both the spouses are working, as much as 40% of their earnings are going towards school fees," he added. He added that some schools were collecting ₹7 lakh to Rs 8 lakh as OTF and this is much higher than the ones collected by even the best engineering colleges.”

"On the other hand, owing to lack of quality as many as 4,000 government schools are shut and parents too would not prefer to send their wards to such institutions," Niranjan Reddy quipped.

However, he brought to the notice of the court that some of the best schools, which are running without a profit motive, are not collecting more than ₹30,000 to ₹50,000 per annum. "Even HPS is collecting lesser fee," he said stressing the point that quality need not be always accompanied by high tuition fees.

"Even in respect of regular school fee, we told the schools not to collect more than Rs 12,000 per annum, but many are collecting more than Rs 40,000," government's special counsel said. "We are expecting replies to show cause notices from errant schools and propose to slap penalties," counsel Sanjeev added.

Telangana additional advocate General Ramachandra Rao told the court that their government was coming out with a foolproof KG to PG education policy that will solve all the vices. "Earlier, during the period of united AP, liquor lobbies were running the schools," he said

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