Schools to reimburse excess fees to parents

A judicial panel of the Delhi High Court has ordered more than 80 private schools to refund excess fees to parents which they collected in the year 2009. These schools have to cut down the salaries of their staff in order to pay back the amount.

The judgment came on the basis of the report submitted by a committee headed by former Rajasthan High Court chief justice Anil Dev Singh. The report was made by examining the financial records of 173 randomly selected schools out of 1,172 schools. The final copy of the report was submitted to the bench headed by NV Ramana. After going through the report, the bench gave its decision.

According to the report submitted by the committee, many schools had unjustly increased their fees and it has been recommended that all of them refund the same with 9% interest, to the parents.
The report further stated that "73 out 173 schools including Rukmani Devi Public School, Pritampura, Kulachi Hansraj Model School, Ashok Vihar and Manav Sathali School, in New Rajendra Nagar, have hiked the fees in an unjustified manner, either partially or fully, so now these schools have to pay back the extra amount to the parents."

However, eight schools have been put under special inspection as the committee has found, apart from hiking their fees in unjustified manner, either partially or fully, their records were unreliable too. Hence, the committee has decided to run a close scan on them.

It was all stated in August 2011, when the Delhi High Court has set up committee to run a check on the accounts of various unaided private schools. This step was taken in order to find out the whether the schools are following the norms of the February 2009 notification, permitting them to hike tuition fees.