Delhi Private School Fee Regulation Bill 2025: Can it control exorbitant fee hikes, ensure affordable education?

Delhi Private School Fee Regulation Bill 2025: Can it control exorbitant fee hikes, ensure affordable education? Premium

Recently, the Delhi government tabled a bold Private School Fee Regulation Bill- The Delhi School Education (Transparency in Fixation and Regulation of Fees) Bill, 2025. This Bill is targeted at reining in the uncontrolled and arbitrary fee hikes in unaided private schools. The Bill was introduced in response to parents' claims of fee hikes at the beginning of the academic year.

The Bill makes it mandatory for schools to submit a proposal before increasing the fee of the school. The fee hike proposal then needs to be approved first by a school-level committee. After the approval of the school-level committee, the Bill will be scrutinised by a district-level committee and if there is a discrepancy then it could analysed by the Directorate of Education. In case, the Directorate of Education finds a fee levied beyond official amount (hidden fee) then it can roll back the fee hike and punish the school by putting a penalty on the school from ₹1 lakh to ₹5 lakh and up to ₹10 lakh for repeating the offence.

Under the Delhi School Education Act of 1973, around 300 private schools were in the ambit of regulated fee hike. The new Bill covers around 1,700 private unaided schools. With time, the number of private schools increased and became an aspirational place for middle class parents. This Bill intends to bring some relief for them. However, the question is: Can it really make a difference in regulating the exorbitant fee hikes of private schools or it will become another example of red-tapism?

It is not surprising that the first criticism of this Bill comes from parents. Despite the fact that parents have become a part of a decision-making body through the school committee, they are outnumbered by either the nominees or the representatives of the school. Parental representation goes down further in the district-level committee.

Next, 15% of parents need to unitedly raise a complaint against the fee hike which could be then taken up by the district committees. Further, we all know how dragging and long the road to justice can be, so a parent would rather withdraw the child from the school instead of getting into a long drawn administrative battle with the school. The case in point becomes even more clear with the examples like DPS Dwarka, which not only expelled 32 students for non-payment of fee but also discriminated against them by locking them and barring them from the library.

Also Read: Big dreams, bigger school fee burden

If this is the condition within the Capital city, one can imagine the scenario in the rest of India. The Bill also indicates the larger crises of Indian education, which is now divided into the crisis-ridden public education sector and the out-of-reach private education sector.

This move reminds us that education cannot be completely left to market regulation, as it is the cradle for making socially and politically aware citizens for nation-building. Through schools, essential education is imparted to mould students into aware adults. Therefore, the distribution of education per se becomes a crucial point in a diverse country such as India. However, to understand the larger picture of the divide between the private and public education systems, one needs to go beyond the boundaries of the capital.

Beyond the Capital, school education faces multiple hurdles from infrastructural inadequacy to a shortage of teachers. The data from the Unified District Information System for School Education (UDISE+) for Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh reveals abysmal dropout rates, especially at the secondary level. From 2017 to 2022, approximately 17.47 % students remained out of the school premises.

Even when the percentage of student enrollment increased at the primary level, the data tells us that children are entering the school but not staying in it. Apart from the BIMARU states, there are a few States whose secondary school dropout rates are above the national average through the years 2017-2022. To name a few, Gujarat, Karnataka, Odisha, Assam, Mizoram, and Meghalaya have consistently shown higher dropout rates for secondary level of education.

This tells us that government schools might be ‘free' or ask for a nominal fee, but they are far away from providing a level playing field with private schools. This is particularly true for the BIMARU states.

With failing public systems, even low-income families feel compelled to opt for low-fee private schools, many of which operate in regulatory grey zones. With the aspirations that their children can compete better in the job market, parents from low-income groups end up enrolling them in bad private schools, which only have a tag of an English-medium school.

Our schools are a reflection of our society, where factors like class and gender make a direct impact on the enrollment of students in the school. Even modest hikes in the school fee lead to families pulling their children out of the school, especially girls. The consequences ripple through generations. These are not just numbers—they are children pulled into the labour market, early marriages, or left disillusioned by an education system that promised mobility but delivered exclusion.

Source: Authors' calculation based on data from Unified District Information System for School Education (UDISE+)

The Delhi government's new Bill, which proposes setting up a regulatory mechanism for monitoring school fees, is more than just an urban policy tweak. It signals a broader ideological shift: education is not just a service—it is a right, and that right must be protected from market excesses. This is particularly relevant to India's hinterlands, where the lack of regulation in the private sector directly feeds the dropout crisis. By placing accountability on private institutions, Delhi is reminding us that equitable education requires active governance, not just infrastructure budgets.

The Delhi model should not be seen in isolation. Instead, it could serve as a policy template for BIMARU and other States, but with some adaptations. For instance, Fee Oversight Committees can be set up to vet private school fee structures, especially for low- and middle-income groups. There could be a provision of scholarship support or a voucher system for the families who end up choosing unregulated private school education. This system already exists in some States, but it needs to come into full action. The scholarship support system could give such families direct benefits transfers or fee subsidies.

We don't know how successful this Bill will be in regulating the private school education but for now. But it does send a subtle warning to the private schools and their management. It is also a wake-up call for the entire nation to rethink about education, its access and affordability.

More than anything else, the private school regulation system must go hand-in-hand with meaningful reforms in public education—improving infrastructure, hiring qualified teachers, and reintroducing dignity in government schooling. While we celebrate the Bill, we should also remember that this is just a stopgap arrangement for the larger education goals underlined by Article 21A of the Indian Constitution and the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009.

Our Central and State governments need to ensure that free and equitable education is provided to all children from 6-14 in government schools. It should also be non-discriminatory and create a level playing field with private education.

As long as government schools suffer from a shortage of teachers, lack of basic amenities and infrastructure, enrollment in government schools will remain a matter of fewer choices, and the private education sector will flourish with its exclusionary and high-end fee structure.

Ultimately, each out-of-school child is a reflection of the failure of the school education system.

(Prof. Aditya Kumar is Assistant Professor, SoEPP, RV University, Bengaluru and Prof. Rajni Chandiwal is Assistant Professor, SoLAS, RV University, Bengaluru

Published - August 21, 2025 04:32 pm IST

Source: The Hindu
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