The Chennai High Court orders spelt relief for schools all over Tamil Nadu as it lifted the ban over collection of fees by private schools/colleges and permitted them to collect 40% of the fees as advance. The schools can now collect this advance by August 31.
Since the fee fixed for some of these institutions had expired and fee fixation committees were yet to frame the new fee structure, the state government had provisionally fixed this year’s fee at 75% of the fee collected last year. The High court ordered that 40% of the fees can be collected as advance by August 31, while the rest 35% can be collected after the schools properly reopen and classes are started physically.
The directions were issued by Justice N Anand Venkatesh on a batch of petitions filed by associations of private educational institutions.
This order comes after the schools had challenged the order previously issued which prohibited educational institutions from demanding any kind of fee due to the lockdown situation. The order issued guidelines as to how the fee structuring should be made as well as instructions to the fee fixation committee to make arrangements accordingly. It also included the guidelines for the issuing of textbooks either free of cost or at a nominal cost so as to support parents. It prohibited any kind of increase in salary to be demanded by the faculty as the economic situation right now is an unprecedented crisis.
Source: ToI