50% Parents Say Their Child’s School Hiked Fees by More Than 30% in Last Two Years: Survey – News18

Around 50% respondents to a LocalCircles survey said the school their children go to has increased the fees by 30% or more in the last two years. Around 8% of the parents surveyed said the fees was hiked by more than 50% over the last two years, while 42% parents reported an increase of 30-50%.

“According to feedback from parents in tier 1 and 2 cities, the annual all-inclusive fees of good private schools now ranges between Rs 1 lakh to Rs 4 lakh and the fees in good private schools in tier 3 and 4 cities range between Rs 50,000 to Rs 2 lakh. With household earnings not growing in the same proportion as school fees, majority of the parents are finding it difficult to cope. Some of them are dipping into their savings to provide a good education to their children,” the survey report said.

Asked how much the schools their children attend increased the total fee in last two years, no one indicated that the fee structure had remained unchanged. Around 8% of the respondents indicated “more than 50%” increase in total fee in the last two years; 42% indicated an increase in the “30%-50%” range; 17% indicated increase in “20%-30%” range; 25% indicated an increase in the range of “10-20%” and 8% of respondents indicated a more moderate increase in fee of up to 10%.

“To sum up, 1 in 2 parents surveyed say that the school their children go to has increased fees by 30% or more on an accumulative basis in the last 2 years,” the report said.

Around 67% of parents surveyed said their state government has not been effective in capping or limiting excessive fee increases by schools. Only 23% indicated the state governments had come through on this account.

“In summary, the survey shows that no parent surveyed has been unaffected by the jump in the free structure of their school going children in the last two years… Given the importance of quality school education and the squeeze that many households in the country are experiencing, there is an urgent need for education boards under central government and state governments to intervene and find effective remedies to contain school fee increases and create a cap of 5-10% as appropriate. If household earnings are growing under 10% a year, school fees just simply cannot continue to grow at 15-25% a year as experienced by many parents. It is just not sustainable,” the report added.

The survey received over 27,000 responses from parents located in 312 districts of India. While 66% respondents were men, 34% were women. Around 45% respondents were from tier 1 cities, 24% from tier 2 and 31% respondents were from tier 3, 4 areas and rural districts.