Education minister Bratya Basu iterated on Tuesday that the school education department is constituting a commission to be helmed by a retired judge that will look into complaints about fee hikes and corporal punishment in private schools.
“A commission with a retired judge is being constituted to look into the fee hikes and corporal punishment in private institutes. The school education department has constituted this commission under the directions of the honourable chief minister,” Basu said in his chamber on the Assembly premises on Tuesday.
The issue was earlier raised during the question-answer session on the floor of the Assembly on Tuesday.
On August 7, a draft of the proposed commission was approved in the state cabinet.
The draft was then sent to the school education department and it’s law cell.
This draft is likely to be tabled in the form of a bill during the ongoing Assembly session.
“The scope of the commission will be to determine the fee to be collected by private schools and to recommend the same to the state government and to hear complaints with regard to collection of excess fees by private schools,” minister Basu had earlier said.
Many private schools have expressed concern over how the proposed commission will arrive at what should be the right fees to be charged by them. The school heads and owners are worried about the parameters the commission might choose to categorise institutions and whether the fees the commission would fix would be commensurate with the facilities a campus offers or the legacy it carries.
During the pandemic, there were protests by guardians in several schools regarding the fees charged by private schools, sometimes allegedly in violation of court orders. The parents also complained about fees being charged for services that had been suspended in the absence of in-person classes.