Parents’ body wants govt to form new fee panel

The state government should ignore a recent report suggesting how school fees should be regulated submitted by a special committee, and set up a new panel that has a more balanced composition, the All India Federation of Parent-Teacher Associations said in a letter to the director of education.

The state government should ignore a recent report suggesting how school fees should be regulated submitted by a special committee, and set up a new panel that has a more balanced composition, the All India Federation of Parent-Teacher Associations said in a letter to the director of education.

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The 21-member committee, headed by former bureaucrat Kumud Bansal, had just three parent-members, while the rest were representatives of school managements or the government. It submitted its report in October, but the three parent-members have said none of their suggestions were taken into account. The government has not yet accepted the report.

“The government needs to form a new balanced and transparent committee that is fair to parents and students,” said Dr Milind Wagh, state secretary Forum Against Commercialisation of Education, which belongs to the Federation.

The committee was set up in June to suggest how an authority that the government proposes to set up should regulate the fees of private schools.

In the letter, the federation has also said that the government should disallow private schools from raising fees until a new panel takes a fresh look at the issue. It will organise a signature campaign all over Maharashtra on December 19.

The report is available on the government website and parents can send in their objections and suggestions until December 25.

It is also available on the Forum for Fairness in Education website: www.educationforumindia.net. “The government website is very slow so parents are not able to download or access the report,” said Jayant Jain, president of the Forum and the Federation.