UP plans public school fees hike

Cash-strapped Uttar Pradesh government, under a debt burden of Rs 100,000 crore, is contemplating a proposal to effect a substantial hike in fees charged from the public schools for seeking recognition and a no-objection certificate (NoC).

For opening a private school affiliated with CBSE or ICSE, one has to seek NOC from the state government. Earlier the NOC was issued free of cost after inspection of the school premises and the infrastructure by the secondary education department authorities.

The department has proposed to charge one time fee of Rs 25,000 from such schools for issuing NOC to new schools. Annual fee of Rs 10,000 is proposed to be imposed on the existing schools affiliated to the CBSE and ICSE.

Number of such schools in UP is 1,100 and 40-50 schools are being added every year. The public schools run by the minority communities and declared minority institutions are proposed to be exempted from the fee.

For the secondary schools seeking affiliation and recognition from the UP Board of High school and Intermediate, one time recognition fee is proposed to be increased to Rs 20,000 from Rs 10,000.

The schools seeking up gradation from 10 to 12th standard would now have to shell out additional Rs 5,000 as the fee is proposed to be increased to Rs 10,000 from Rs 5,000. The schools to desiring to add new subjects and seeking recognition from the UP board, the fee is likely to increased to Rs 5,000 from Rs 2,500.

The fee for recognition is deposited between January 1 to march 31 every year. The latecomers have to pay penalty or late fee of Rs 2,000. The penalty is proposed to be hiked to Rs 10,000.

There were three categories of schools affiliated with the UP board of high school and intermediate""government owned, government aided and private unaided institutions. There were 548 government owned inter colleges better known as GIC or government inter college, 4,460 government aided inter colleges and over 7,000 unaided privately run inter colleges.

There is no proposal to charge any fee from the unaided private but recognised high and inter colleges, said AK Srivastava, secretary secondary education department.

"If any fee is imposed on the unaided colleges then they would pass on the burden to the students and since we don't regulate their fee structure and neither provide financial assistance to them so there was no justification of imposing any burden on such schools, said Srivastava.

He however added that the proposal was at a very nascent stage and it may acquire concrete shape as soon as it is placed from the cabinet.