Parents’ associations of city schools have demanded that the state government fix a fee structure for private schools by including the cost of admitting 25 per cent of poor students under the RTE Act. The parents express apprehensions that the school management may pass on the additional burden of the RTE quota to the parents of regular students, since the government is willing to pay only up to Rs 8,000 per annum to private schools for every RTE student, while the fee in most of the city schools ranges from Rs 25,000 to Rs 50,000 per annum.
Parents are questioning the discrimination in fee structure between regular and RTE quota students. “We welcome the decision of the government to implement 25 per cent quota for poor students in private schools. If the government prescribes a fee of just Rs 8,000 per annum for RTE students, we are ready to bear three times more fees up to Rs 24,000 for our children. But the fees cannot be Rs 50,000 for regular students. The government should reduce fees in private schools,” said S. Bhanu Murthy, a parent.
“The state government is talking about reimbursing the amount of up to Rs 8,000 to private schools per student for giving admissions under 25 per cent RTE quota. It may prompt managements to recover the lost fee from parents of 75 per cent regular students. We are already overburdened by school fees, which has been increasing by 20 to 50 per cent every year. The government should either increase the RTE fee reimbursement or bring down the fees in private schools for regular students,” said J. Kamalakar Rao, representative of city schools parents association.