Pressure of parents can deter schools to do exorbitant fee hike, says RSS education wing
'Parents must keep a check on the quality of education in the schools they choose for their children; their pressure can deter schools from doing an exorbitant fee hike,' said Ravindra Kanhere, national president of Vidya Bharati, an affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh.
Mr. Kanhere's statement came at a time when reports of protests by parents of school students are making headlines from different states across India who complaint about exorbitant fees being charged by the private schools.
In Delhi too, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government under the leadership of chief minister Rekha Gupta, earlier this month had approved an ordinance based on the proposed Delhi School Education (Transparency in Fixation and Regulation of Fees) Bill, 2025. the ordinance came after a private school in the capital had strike off the \student names from its rolls for not paying the increased fees. The state government had also sent inspection teams to the school, after which DoE issued an order regarding reinstatement.
Answering a question on inaction of state governments at in regulating the fees of private schools, Mr. Kanhere said that deciding fees of schools is prerogative of government.
'But because you have raised the point of fee hikes in private schools, I was to tell you that there is a system in states that 10% fee hike can be done through the committee which is headed by the district collector. If the fees have to be raised more than 10% than there is a state government committee at state level. This is a general practice in many states,' he said.
He added that the parents should check the quality of education in schools in which their wards are studying. 'Pressure of parents can deter schools to do exorbitant fee hike,' he added
Speaking on the controversy related to language in the New Education Policy (NEP), Mr. Kanhere said that all the states are free to choose any three of the 22 Indian languages prescribed under the policy. He dismissed the Tamil Nadu Government's charge of imposition of Hindi by the Centre and added that a child is free to study any southern language if he from South.
'If someone in the South is learning Tamil, he can also learn Malayalam or any other language… All Indian languages have been listed, and they have been asked to choose from them. Similarly, when it comes to the third language, it can be English, Japanese, Korean or Mandarin also,' he added.
Commenting on the controversy of NCERT books removing the usage of Babri mosque in chapters related to Ayodhya's Ram temple, Mr. Kanhere said that 'misleading facts' must be erased from the textbooks.
'We should write historical facts only. But we have seen over the years that some or other misleading facts are being included in the books. If they are being removed, nothing wrong in doing so,' he added.
Speaking about the expansion of Vidhya Bharti, he said that the organisation had opened its first school in Uttar Pradesh's Gorakhpur district in 1952 and is currently running 12,118 schools including 14 Sainik Schools in 684 districts across India. The organisation is also running over 8,000 non-formal educational centres across the country to support the marginalised sections of the society and about 10,000 'Shishu Vatikas' to provide early childhood education to children.
'Collectively, more than 35.33 lakh students are currently enrolled in Vidya Bharati schools under the able guidance of more than 1.53 lakh teachers,' he added.
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