What is the story about?
A few months after the Delhi Assembly passed the Delhi School Education (Transparency in Fixation and Regulation of Fees) Bill, 2025 with the aim to regulate
fees in private schools, the Delhi government has notified the Act with Lieutenant-Governor V K Saxena issuing the Gazette notification. This Bill, was tabled by the Delhi Education Minister Ashish Sood in August 2025 after the Capital city saw widespread protests from parents for months over fee hikes by several private schools at the start of the academic session in April.
What The Bill Says
The Bill seeks to ensure that all schools in the national capital city of India, New Delhi, fall under a common structure of oversight regarding school fees. To ensure that all recognised and unrecognised private schools are governed as per the same standards, there will be a three-tier fee regulation framework that will include a School Level Fee Regulation Committee, the District Fee Appellate Committee, and a Review Committee.
At the first tier (level), it will be made compulsory for all private schools to set up a School Level Fee Regulation Committee by July 15 of each year. Chaired by a nominee of the school management, this Committee will have to include the school principal and the secretary. Additionally, the membership will include five parents, who are drawn by lots from the Parent-Teacher Association, along with three teachers of the school and a nominee from the Director of Education, who acts as an observer to the committee. The Bill also states that of these members, at least one of the members must be from a SC/ST or socially and educationally backwards class of citizens, and at least two members should be women.
This Committee has to meet before August 15 and unanimously approve school’s proposed fee for the upcoming academic year, which then cannot be changed for another three years.
The next level of this is the District Fee Appellate Committee which will be responsible for grievance redressal. A Committee will for formed in ever district of Delhi, which will be chaired by the deputy director of education (DoE) of the concerned district and will also include the Zonal DoE as its member-secretary. A chartered accountant or district accounts officer, two representatives from the school, and two parents' representative should be a part of this Committee.
The third tier is the Revision Committee which will be set up at the state level, and will comprise of a chairperson who is “an eminent person with valuable contributions in the field of education”. The members in this Committee should include a chartered accountant, controller/deputy controller of accounts, a representative of schools, one representative of parents, and an additional DoE. The orders passed by this committee will be binding for a three-year period, similar to the fee change time limit set on first level.
A big change being introduced through this Bill is that a challenge to the fee prescribed by the School Level Fee Regulation Committee can only be initiated by filing a complaint by 15 per cent of the parents from the affected school.
Penalties For Schools
As per the new Bill, a first-time violation will attract financial fines ranging between one lakh and five lakh rupees. A repeated violation will double the earlier fine, i.e. it will be between two lakh to 10 lakh. Additionally, in cases of continued non-compliance, the DoE will be given the power to suspend or withdraw a school’s recognition, restrict its right to revise fees, or take over its management.
In the new Bill, schools have been banned from withholding exam results, striking off a student’s name from the roll list, and denying participation in classroom activities. Schools found guilty of practicing this will be penalised Rs 50,000 fine per student.
