Parents want regulation of school fees: Survey

New Delhi: A survey has found that 93 per cent parents want annual fees charged by the private schools to be a capped at one month of tution fee.

"Schools adopt various ways to hike the total fees. While the tuition fee may not be hiked, all other fees like annual/admission fee are raised indiscriminately by the schools.

Hence, when asked whether this fee, under the head of annual or admission fee, should be limited to one month of tuition fee, 93 per cent of the citizens agreed," the survey by LocalCircles revealed.

For the survey, the LocalCircles community social media platform received over 58,000 responses from over 21,000 parents in 215 districts in the country.

The survey also focused on the ways to regulate school fee hikes, with the majority of parents (54 per cent of 13,317 votes) feeling that the percentage of hike should be linked to inflation.

One of the biggest arguments given by schools for raising fees is to enhance the quality of education or maintain it but in the polls, parents do not seem to be convinced of this line.

Almost 77 per cent of 7,205 parents say that capping of fees would not affect the quality of education.

In the survey, a majority of parents have also suggested that it should be made mandatory for all schools to publish their annual statement of costs on their website.