Parents stumped by 11-20% hike in fees by schools: Survey

New Delhi: Beginning of new academic session has come as a shocker for many as majority of parents said schools have hiked fees between 11-20 percent this year, according to a nationwide survey.

Moreover, 15 percent of parents surveyed said their schools have hiked the fees by over 20 percent, the survey by community social media platform LocalCircles has said.

"The fee increase in many schools has again been quite high this year and parents in different parts of the country have come on the roads to protest about it," the survey said.

"They have also been complaining about the hefty increase in the annual fee charges which schools are not able to justify," it said.

Parents across the country are very concerned as school fee in the last years has been rising at a much faster rate than the average earnings of the parents thereby creating a squeeze, it said further.

According to the survey of around 9,000 parents/grandparents, a large 54 percent of respondents said schools have increased the fee between 11-20 percent.

"15 percent said that the increase was above 20 percent and 31 percent said that the increase was between 0 -10 percent," the survey said.

Over 75 percent parents from Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Goa said that their child's school has increased the fee by more than 10 percent.

Around 50-75 percent parents from the states of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Delhi said that fee hike has been more than 10 percent.

Only Gujarat and Bihar were the two states where parents said that majority of the schools have increased the fee by less than 10 percent.

LocalCircles said it interacted with heads of some schools that have capped their fee increase to less than 10 percent and found that they focused on optimising costs, negotiated with their vendor base and also looked at reducing wastage of resources.

"As a result, they were able to keep the fee increase to the permissible levels," it said.

However, parents have been feeling the pinch of hike in school fee with many admitting to cutting discretionary and household expenses to be able to afford their child's school education, the survey said.

Meanwhile, CBSE has mandated disclosure of the fee by schools to CBSE, and on websites of schools.

However, as per the last notification from CBSE, only 14,000 out of the total 18,000 schools had complied with the order, LocalCircles said.