All private schools in Delhi will now be subject to fee regulation: Govt

Delhi's new bill aims to regulate school fees for all government and private schools, addressing unchecked hikes and enhancing transparency and accountability.

New Delhi

Parents are hopeful the new bill will help regulate fees. (Representative photo)

Fee regulation norms that only applied to select schools under the Delhi Development Authority’s (DDA’s) land clause will now apply to all government and private schools, once the bill introduced in the assembly is passed, education minister Ashish Sood said on Thursday.

Speaking at the sidelines of the ongoing Monsoon Session of the Delhi Assembly, the minister said the Delhi School Education (Transparency in Fixation and Regulation of Fees) Bill, 2025, is likely to be passed on Friday. He said the biggest benefit of the bill will be its equitable applicability, ending a “decade of unchecked profiteering” by private institutions.

“This bill replaces a toothless, reactive framework with a proactive, empowered, and transparent one. Earlier, the DoE could only approve the fees increased by the schools under the land clause, while there are hundreds of smaller private schools where fee increase goes unchecked. The parents of bigger schools complain, but if the fee of a small private school in Najafgarh increases from ₹1,000 to ₹1,500, it is a 50% hike. This is a huge burden for the parents of that school but they, in most cases, do not complain,” Sood said.

He said that of over 1,443 schools, the land clause applied to just about 350 schools, and that fees can be checked by the Department of Education (DoE) if a complaint is made under the Delhi School Education Act & Rules, 1973 (DSEAR, 1973).

To be sure, the land clause applies to schools that were allotted land on subsidised rates by the DDA. These schools have to inform DoE about proposed fee hikes online on its portal, for review by the department.

Asha Prabhakar, chairperson, National Progressive Schools’ Conference (NPSC), said that irrespective of whether schools are built on DDA land, the operational cost of running schools increases every year. “Fuel costs, teachers’ salaries, day-to-day costs are increasing each year. Every school’s fees largely depend on these factors as well; these things have to be taken into consideration,” she said.

Karan Aggrawal, whose ward studies at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, said he is hoping for relief from rocketing fees, but was unsure how the law would apply. “We just want one thing—that is school fees should not be so high that a middle-class parent is not able to afford it. That is our only concern,” he said.

The education minister said that under the existing norms, the fee changes submitted to the DoE were not approved for any school last year; it was approved for 28 schools in 2023 and 228 schools in 2022.

Data accessed by HT revealed sharp fee hikes by schools regulated under the land clause. While 168 proposals were submitted in 2016-17, the number climbed to 262 by 2023-24; the percentage of accepted proposals grew from around 40% in 2019-20 to around 63% in 2022-23 and 67% in 2023-24.

“In 2024-25, interestingly, 244 proposals were submitted but none accepted, rejected or decided upon. This was the year before the election. The reality is that more schools hiked fees than those who even submitted proposals,” Sood said, alleging that the previous government failed to enforce its own regulations.

He further accused the previous regime of failing to monitor schools, irrespective of whether they were regulated under the land clause. “Audits were rare, and legal ambiguities, particularly after a 2024 high court stay, left the DoE paralysed from issuing enforceable orders. The previous government, in their 10-year regime, totally failed to regulate their fee and did not audit their statements of fee or return filed with DoE, except for a few schools,” Sood said.

Delhi president of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Saurabh Bharadwaj accused Sood of trying to mislead parents. “The actual aim of this new act is to protect over 350 private schools in Delhi from various judgments of the high court and the Supreme Court of India... With this new act, these private schools will attempt to bypass the requirement of seeking prior permission from the director of education. They will also use the act to justify and legalise the illegal fee hikes they implemented in the past without approval,” he said.

The new bill includes a mandatory audit of accounts, a three-tier regulatory framework, empowered parent committees, strict penalties and public disclosure, the minister said, which were not part of the regulatory framework so far.

Aparajita Gautam, president, Delhi Parents Association, said that the government should first quantify the number of schools in the Capital. “The number of schools stated by the government is different in each statement; first, they should come up with one number which is accurate. Also, play schools should also be included in this bill; why are they left out?” she said.