Education Minister Manish Sisodia tabled two crucial education Bills in the Delhi Assembly on Friday aimed at restricting how the fees collected from students could be spent. The Delhi School (Verification of Accounts and Refund of Excess Fee) Bill, 2015, if passed, will also allow the Delhi Government to form a committee to audit the accounts of private schools to identify any irregularities.
Also, the Bill proposes defaulters to be punished with a sentence up to three years and a fine of at least `50,000 and up to `5 lakh along with refund of any excessive fee collected from the parents. The Bills are expected to be discussed in the Assembly on Monday.
The other Bill, seeking amendments to Delhi School Education Act, prohibits private schools from charging any donation or capitation fee during admission of the students. If the Bill is passed, the defaulters will have to pay ten times the capitation fee charged or `5 lakh (whichever is higher) for the first offence and `10 lakh for repeated offence. Another amendment to the same Bill will allow the Delhi Government to fix salaries for private school teachers.
Presenting the two Bills on the floor of the House, Education Minister Manish Sisodia said, “There are around 1,800 private schools running in Delhi that cater to 10 to 12 lakh students. While some of them have made significant contributions to improve education quality, many others have become profit making agencies by exploiting the loopholes in the laws. They charge exorbitant fees from the students and divert that money to other avenues.”
Sisodia added that it won’t be fair to fix the fee structure of the private schools because any move to restrict funds available for the schools would restrict the kind of facilities they can offer to the students. “So instead of fixing the fee structure, we have decided to bring a law to regulate where the money raised from the school fee is spent. As long as it is spent to improve the quality of education for the students, we will support that. But if that money is diverted to other businesses or other activities, we will crack down on it,” added the Education Minister.
To implement the same, the Government has proposed to set up a committee, headed by a retired High Court Judge or a retired officer not below the rank of Principal Secretary, to audit the accounts of the schools. The schools will also have to submit “duly audited” financial returns along with proposed fee structure for the next academic year to the committee.
After the audit, the committee can direct the school to refund the excess fee as well as to “reasonably” refix its fee.
The other Bill — The Delhi School Education (Amendment) Bill, 2015 — has proposed two amendments to the Delhi School Education Act: prohibit donations for admissions and fix salaries of private school teachers.
“The Right to Education law has already prohibited acceptance of capitation fee. But all we can do in case of a violation is to revoke the recognition to the school. But that would affect the students and their parents more than the proprietors of the school. So we have proposed that if a person takes donation from the parents for admission, he will have to pay the higher of `5 lakh or ten times that donation amount,” said Sisodia while tabling the Bill. The second offence of the same kind will see a penalty of `10 lakh.
Besides, the Government can also issue warnings, stop any financial aid and restrict admissions in that school, if the Bill is passed. The other proposed amendment to the Delhi School Education Act would give power to the Delhi Government to fix salaries of the private school teachers.
“This amendment is also derived from Right to Education (RTE) Act. According to the complaints that we receive, 60 to 70 per cent of private school teachers are exploited. While RTE Act says that salaries of private school teachers should be at par with Government schools, but the actual situation is far worse. let alone salaries equal to the Government schools, these teachers are not even given minimum wages. With this amendment, we intend to correct that,” said Sisodia.