NEW DELHI: The Delhi government has made it mandatory all private and unaided schools in the national capital to take prior permission before raising fees, a PTI report quoted Education Minister Ashish Sood as saying on Thursday.
Until now, only around 350 schools built on government-allotted land were required to seek approval before hiking their fees, he said.
“With the introduction of the Delhi School Education (Transparency in Fixation and Regulation of Fees) Bill, 2025, this regulation will now apply to all private schools across the city,” Sood said, describing the legislation as a major step towards ending arbitrary fee hikes.
“This bill is not just a formality. It is a promise to parents that fee structures will no longer be manipulated at will,” he said.
According to official data, “The new law also addresses various shortcomings in the existing system, which relied on the Delhi School Education Act and Rules, 1973 (DSEAR), and several court judgments.”
These older rules applied mostly to schools built on government land with specific allotment conditions, leaving a large number of schools outside the purview of fee regulation, it said.
The official record mentioned that nearly 1,443 private schools, mostly located on private land or on government land without such conditions, have remained unregulated for years.
The Department of Education (DoE), in an official order dated June 8, 2022, had declared that fee hikes proposed for the 2020-?21 academic session were invalid.
Schools were not permitted to charge any increased fees for the sessions 2020 to 2021 and 2021 to 22. However, this order was often ignored or challenged by private institutions, it noted.
It further said that soon after the COVID-19 pandemic, the then government approved fee hikes for 227 schools. The DoE said that out of 262 schools that submitted fee hike proposals for 2023-24, only 28 were reviewed.
“Such a casual approach allowed schools to raise fees without scrutiny. Several of these institutions later obtained stay orders against government circulars meant to curb such hikes,” the order added.
The Delhi School Education (Transparency in Fixation and Regulation of Fees) Bill, 2025, that will regulate the fee hike in all schools was introduced in the Assembly on Monday.