A division bench of the Hyderabad High Court on Monday expressed shock over certain private schools collecting an one time fee (OTF) of up to Rs 7 lakh per student during admission and said it is time to regulate school fees in Hyderabad.

"If you want your people to flourish, you should start with schools and not colleges," said the bench of acting Chief Justice Dilip B Bhosale and Justice A V Sesha Sai. The bench was hearing a PIL filed by Hyderabad Schools Parents Association (HSPA) challenging one time fee (OTF).

"There is a need to bring in regulatory mechanism to stop this ridiculous practice of OTF," Justice Bhosale said.

Kalpana Ekbote, the counsel for the association has told the court that the OTF is nothing, but banned capitation fee now brought in with a new name.

S Niranjan Reddy, another counsel who has appeared for the protesting parents, told the court that some schools were collecting the OTF in the name of constructing new buildings. "There is a GO that allows schools to collect such fee, but it should not cross Rs 6,000," he said. "In families where both the spouses are working, as much as 40 per cent of their earnings are going towards school fees," he added.

"On the other hand, owing to lack of quality as many as 4,000 government schools are shut and parents too would not prefer to send their wards to such institutions," Niranjan Reddy quipped.

"Even in respect of regular school fee, we told the schools not to collect more than Rs 12,000 per annum, but many are collecting more than Rs 40,000," government's special counsel Sanjeev Kumar said. "We are expecting replies to show cause notices from errant schools and propose to slap penalties," counsel Sanjeev added.

By Premji