MP HC Order On Charging Tuition Fee By Pvt CBSE Schools: SC Directs DSE To Publish Data On Compliance By Schools Within 2 Weeks

The Supreme Court on Thursday disposed of a SLP that challenged an order of the Madhya Pradesh High Court wherein directions were given to private unaided CBSE schools to charge only tuition fees from its students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Division Bench comprising of Justice AM Khanwilkar and Justice Sanjeev Khanna went on to note that the concerned District Level Committee had overseen the steps taken by the schools under its jurisdiction.

"If the students pertaining to that academic year have any grievance, regarding non-compliance of the directions given by the High Court, are free to make representation to the District Level Committee", added the Court.

The Bench further directed the Director of School Education, Madhya Pradesh to compile the details from various District Committees about compliances made by private unaided schools affiliated to CBSE with the High Court's direction.

It added that the details so compiled by the District Committees about compliances made by the Director of School Education, MP  were to be displayed on the official website of Education Department of the State of Madhya Pradesh, within two weeks.

If the information so displayed is not consistent with the steps taken by the concerned school, the Court said, the students were at liberty to make representation to the District Level Committee which may be considered appropriately within four weeks from its receipt after giving opportunity to the concerned schools to respond in that regard. 

The Bench also left it open to the concerned school management to bring it to the notice of the authorities if there was any discrepancy in the data displayed by the Education Department on the official website.

With these observations, the Court went on to remark thus:

Beside this, nothing more is required to be said in this order.

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The other issues raised in the concerned petition need not be gone into in view of the above arrangement. 

The plea, filed by Advocate Mayank Kshirsagar, had submitted that the High Court order ignored the issues of lumpsum payments, clarity of the term "tuition fees", the various fund and reserves available with private unaided schools, non-disclosure of actual incurred expenses, adverse effects of online education, hardships of 25% EWS category students etc.

It was added that despite the non-functioning of the schools and the students not availing services provided by the schools, many of them hiked their fees and/or started harassing the students' parents to pay the entire quarterly fees in advance.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court (Jabalpur Bench) had on 5th November 2020, while providing relief to parents and school staffers said that the schools can recover only tuition fees from the students during the pandemic era.

A Bench of Acting Chief Justice Sanjay Yadav and Justice Rajeev Kumar Dubey had passed the order while hearing a batch of 10 petitions filed before the court which emanated from the notifications dated 17.04.2020, 24.04.2020 and 16.05.2020 issued by the Central Board of Secondary Education and the School Education Department, State of Madhya Pradesh, regarding payment of fee by parents in Private and connected petitions Unaided Schools during the lock-down period in the wake of COVID19 Pandemic.

The Court, in its order, had said that in order to strike a balance among the stakeholders which include students/parents, teachers and management/institution " the unaided private institution shall ensure that the students of all ranks are not deprived of the quality education/learning by adopting digital/online education platform evolved by the Government of India under caption "Pragyata" (Guidelines for Digital Education, MHRD dated 14.07.2020) by adopting synchronous or asynchronous method of online learning and teaching."

The Court had also clarified that the directions were issued under the unprecedented situation and will be prevalent till the pandemic era and are not to be treated as a precedent in future with the restoration of normalcy.

Case Title: Sachin Maheswari & Ors. v. The State of Madhya Pradesh & Ors.

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