By Autar Nehru
The nursery admission season began Delhi on Nov 28, 2025—and is likely to conclude by the 3rd week of March 2026. Also, Delhi’s new age policy in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 —requiring children entering Class 1 to be at least six years old and not older than seven as of March 31, 2026 starts from the next academic year. Together with a series of policy changes and curriculum initiatives, these administrative announcements may sound routine.
However, what is unfolding goes beyond routine governance. It reflects a broader political struggle over narrative ownership and long-term legacy in Delhi’s public education arena. In the process, the administration is steadily erasing what many saw as the AAP government’s unmistakable “watermark” on a decade of reforms. As the upcoming academic cycle begins, this contest is poised to deepen, with both policy shifts and symbolic gestures aimed at defining a new chapter in Delhi’s schooling model.
Amid all these developments, perhaps the most consequential move by the BJP government this year has been the passage of the Delhi School Education (Transparency in Fixation and Regulation of Fees) Act, 2025. In the broader history of school-education reforms in India, this legislation stands out for several reasons. To understand its significance, it’s worth briefly revisiting how we got here:
Regulating School Fees in Delhi, finally
On August 14, 2025, the Delhi government enacted the Delhi School Education (Transparency in Fixation and Regulation of Fees) Act, 2025, marking a major reform in the governance of private school fee structures in the national capital after decades of ‘failed’ regulatory efforts. Building upon decades of incremental reforms—from the Delhi School Education 1973 Act to the Justice Anil Dev Singh Committee (2009–2017)—while addressing historical loopholes that allowed arbitrary fee hikes to flourish, the new law introduces school-level committees for fee fixation.
Covering all 1,700 private schools in Delhi, the 2025 Act institutionalizes a structured approach to fee fixation, enforces strict penalties for violations, and grants parents’ direct grievance channels. Earlier, the fee regulation spotlight mostly remained on the 300 unaided private schools granted land by DDA. Yet, far from being the culmination of an amicable settlement of the long-contested issue, the opposition leaders and parent groups have criticized the new law for the lack of public consultation prior to the passage of the Act as draft bill was not released for stakeholder review, leading to allegations of a “non-transparent legislative process.”
That the several private schools’ lobbies and pressure groups in Delhi responding to parental and children activism and fighting judicial battles from 2007 onwards in the aftermath of 6th Pay Commission fall out and then Aam Aaadmi Party (AAP) led regime’s ‘exacting’ compliance rule of a decade from 2015-2025, having cautiously welcomed the new law, also tells a tale of their lack of enthusiasm for the regulation. The issue of unauthorized or excessive hikes for 2025–26—already a source of intense public outcry—remain unaddressed even as the apparatus described under the new law are yet to take shape. In effect, it appears the new scheme will go to floor in the next session.
Under the 2025 Act, schools are required to propose fees for a three-year block, instead of annual ad-hoc hikes. School-Level Fee Regulation Committees (SLFRCs) to be formed each academic year before July 15 is empowered to oversee fee proposals and approve or disapprove them. Following a participatory model, these SLFRCs are required to be composed of School management representative and principal, three teachers (selected by lottery), five parents (selected by lottery, SC/ST/EBC communities and at least two women also requirement) and one observer from the Directorate of Education.
In determining the fees chargeable by a school under the new law, among several factors to be taken into account include any surplus funds generated from donations or contributions, including those from non-resident Indians or charitable sources and Government schemes, allowances for reasonable annual salary increments, the ratio of student-related expenditure to the school’s total income, and an appropriate revenue surplus for prescribed purposes.
In hierarchal order, second committee under the law is The District Fee Appellate Committees to adjudicate the dispute between the Aggrieved Parents Group or the Management or the Parents Teachers’ Association regarding fee to be charged by the school management. The third committee at the state level is the Revision Committee, whose decision will be final and conclusive and shall be binding on the parties for three academic years. The Act limits direct access to civil courts, channeling complaints exclusively through district and state-level committees. It restricts direct civil court recourse for parents and requires 15% of parents in a school to lodge complaints.
In all this structuring, however, the Director of Education, still remains the most powerful. Vested with quasi-judicial powers akin to those of a Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM), the director has powers to recovery of fines through attachment of property, appointment of receivers to manage defaulting institutions and escalation of persistent non-compliance to higher authorities. This marks a significant departure from past regimes, where DoE directives often lacked enforceability.
It is pertinent to mention that historically school fee regulation journey which traces back to the Delhi School Education Act of 1973, did not create mechanisms for parental representation, financial audits, or structured grievance redressal. Schools were largely free to determine fees, provided they adhered to general principles of “reasonableness,” a term that remained legally ambiguous. As a result, the decades following 1973 witnessed a growing trend of unchecked fee hikes, particularly among unaided private schools.
In 2009, following a Public Interest Litigation against unjustified fee hikes post-Sixth Pay Commission salary revisions, the Delhi High Court constituted the Justice Anil Dev Singh Committee. Over eight years, the Committee reviewed 1,066 schools and identified multiple instances of financial irregularities the committee audited over 1,000 schools, identified fiscal misuse, and ordered refunds with interest for excess fees collected in its nine reports. Despite these recommendations including cap on development fees at 15% of tuition fees, strictly for capital expenditure and mandatory segregation of development funds from other accounts, compliance remained weak—by late 2014, only five of 330 schools had complied.
Attempts to strengthen oversight between 2015 and 2024 included Directorate of Education (DoE) circulars, prior approval requirements for fee hikes, and audits. However, judicial stays, administrative gaps, and inconsistent enforcement diluted their impact. By 2023–24, oversight had nearly collapsed: fee hike rejection rates had fallen to 32%, and out of 262 proposals, only 28 were formally reviewed. This regulatory erosion, combined with rising parental protests, laid the groundwork for the present 2025 legislation.
“This law makes the education system more transparent and accountable by preventing uncontrolled fee increases in schools. Information about this act is being communicated to parents so that they can be aware of their rights and ensure that their children receive quality education at reasonable fees. Our aim is to regulate fees rather than set any cap. After studying the existing mechanisms to regulate fees in states like Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, we have formulated this law,” said Education Minister Ashish Sood at the Parents Town Hall organized on Aug 14.
As mentioned above the private school associations aren’t celebrating in what is an end to their ‘ordeal’ and earning back parental trust. “Private schools in Delhi proved a huge constituency for the BJP in these schools as we were not happy with the AAP (for compliance burden) and yet we were not heard by this new government. We had two major issues. One was that 99% of Delhi’s private schools are small and medium budget schools and the challenges they are facing are different from 1% affluent high-end schools (300 schools on DDA land). This distinction which is a ground reality doesn’t reflect in vision of this government. Second was demand for allowing annual hikes to adjust to inflation and increments and capping it for transparency and trust. However, it is one size fits all and all of us have to comply with the new architecture,” says Dr Chandrakant Singh, National General Secretary of Private Land Public Schools Trust and Chairman Ideal Radiant Public School, Hastsal Delhi. Two other associations that this writer approached for their reactions didn’t respond, also lends to the unhappy mood in private school management community over the new law.
Long time activist and a pioneering petitioner on school fee regulation in Delhi, Advocate Ashok Agarwal, while agreeing the need of such a law, feels the school committee itself will be a challenge and it may potentially lead to more litigations and distrust. “Let’s see how it works on ground and future amendments may need to address shortcomings that will arise in course of implementation and compliance,” he adds.
Even as Delhi joins 17 other school fee regulating states in India after barrowing many sections from Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh, which also rely on school-level or district-level committees, the need of National School Fee Regulation Bill, ensuring consistency across states to integrate NEP 2020’s provisions for transparency and parental protection, is there.
