Delhi private schools are in a rush to return back all the unwarranted fees that they had taken from parents and it is the best thing ever.
The Delhi govt. under CM Arvind Kejriwal had last year made a committee lead by Justice Anil Dev Singh in order to look into the matter of the fee hike done by private schools in Delhi.
The committee investigated about 1, 108 private schools in Delhi and finally on August 19th, 2017 identified about 449 of them having overcharged parents of their students stating the reason as wanting to implement the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission.
In his press conference that day, CM Kejriwal stated that this was not done to ‘interfere’ with the school workings instead just to ‘discipline’ them if needed. This statement was in response to the Delhi govt. ultimatum to these 449 schools to refund the excess fee taken from parents within 2 weeks or the govt. would take over these private schools.
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These schools after the careful examination by the committee headed by Singh were given a show-cause notice due to overcharging their students and asked them to take it back.
Along with that, as reported by various media, Kejriwal also revealed that one school had a surplus of Rs. 15 crore and another school had a surplus of Rs 5 crore due to the fee hike that many schools did.
The Result After The Ultimatum
Within just a few days of having given the notice, there has been an immediate result with many schools putting out advertisements in newspapers requesting parents to collect their refund.
Amongst these schools are some like Sardar Patel Vidyalaya in the Lodhi Estate, or Heera Public Schools in Gurgaon, or Oxford Public School in Nehru Nagar and even the Deenpur located school of Smt Misri Devi Gyan Niketan School have all given out notice ads in newspaper informing parents to collect their refund by 5th of September 2017.
The list also included some very popular and well-known schools like Delhi Public School, Springdales, Sanskriti, Amity International, Modern School and more.
The notice given out by Oxford Public School stated “In Compliance of the DOE order dt.29.05.2017, the school is refunding the excess Tuition and Development Fee and Building Fund. Students who were enrolled in the school 2009-10 and 2010-11, can collect the refund from the school immediately”.
All in all, the ultimatum by the govt. seems to really be working as it has made several schools sit up and correct their wrongdoing.
Although the major schools still have to notify if they complied with the DOE’s orders, this instance can work as an example that only stern and vigilant implementation of rules can give good results. This ideology needs to be adopted by more sectors of the govt.
Image Credits: Google Images
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