Private schools in Hyderabad use new tactics to fleece parents

Hyderabad: With the education department keeping a strict eye on collection of school fees, private managements are finding new ways to escape the law.
Some institutions in the city have come up with ingenious ways of collecting huge donations for new admissions under multiple categories.

Until last year, top schools used to collect donations between Rs 40,000 to over a lakh rupees per head for new admissions —  from nursery to higher sections. This fee was in addition to the annual tuition fee, which parents have to pay for their child’s study that year.

According to GO-91 of the educational department, the admission fee should not exceed Rs 5,000 for new enrolments. Parents and various groups have been highlighting gross violations of this rule by school managements for quite some time.

As a result, the education department has issued a circular to all institutions, stating in no uncertain terms that rules must be obeyed. This has forced private school managements to come up with a new plan. Limiting admission fees at Rs 5000, they are now collecting remaining sums under different heads.

Pavan Reddy, a parent, said schools such as Global Edge, Sloka, Guardian School, Santa Maria are still collecting excess fees. “Activity fee, teacher’s training corpus, children’s project corpus are some of the different heads. One school is collecting Rs 1 lakh from new parents. The admission fee is Rs 5,000, but the rest of the donation amount of Rs 95,000 is being collected as well,” he said.

Parents, who were a bit happy about limiting of admission fees after a relentless fight are now saying the issue is back to square one. “We fought to regulate admission fees, but donations are being collected to fleece parents as usual,” they said.