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In Hyderabad, sending your five-year-old to kindergarten in a private school can cost you Rs 1 lakh just for a year’s tuition. But that’s not all — the school bus, lunch, uniforms, books, other learning material, annual day and sports day costs, field trips, and other additional expenses can end up costing over Rs 50,000.
Expensive private school education is a problem for parents across India. In Hyderabad, parents and civil society organisations have been advocating for school fee regulation for decades now.
Earlier this year, a promising legislation was drafted by the Telangana Education Commission titled the Telangana Private Schools and Junior Colleges Fee Regulatory and Monitoring Commission Draft Bill, 2025.
It proposes the establishing of a regulatory body called the Telangana Private School Fee Regulatory and Monitoring Commission, which would separate private schools into different categories and set an upper limit on their fees while considering their actual costs. The Commission could also recommend imposing fines up to Rs 10 lakh on schools, or push for cancelling their recognition.
The draft Bill was submitted to the government in January. However, amid consultations between private school managements and the Revanth Reddy government, a new academic year began yet again on June 12 with no fee regulations in place.
Telangana has 42,901 schools, according to the Union Education Ministry’s Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) Plus report for 2023-24. Only 28% of them are private, unaided recognised schools. But private schools are where 60% of the state’s nearly 73 lakh school students from pre-primary to class 12 go.
According to the Comprehensive Annual Modular Survey (2022-23), in primary education (classes 1 to 5), 50% of students in rural areas and 67% in urban areas go to private, unaided schools in Telangana. For comparison, states like Tamil Nadu (44%), Karnataka (46%), Kerala (28%) have a smaller percentage of parents in urban areas choosing private unaided schools.
Here’s a look at the school fees situation in Hyderabad, the absence of fee regulations, parents’ decades-long struggle to bring in an effective law, and the challenges with the draft Bill.
What a private school costs in Hyderabad
At The Future Kid’s School in Hyderabad’s Nanakramguda, the emerging extension of the city’s IT corridor, tuition fees for a year for lower kindergarten starts at Rs 1.06 lakh. If food is included, it goes up to Rs 1.17 lakh. With transportation, it can go as high as Rs 2 lakh.
Tuition fees for class 4 hits Rs 1.6 lakh, reaching Rs 2 lakh with food ,and as high as Rs 2.9 lakh with transportation.
Oakridge International School in Gachibowli, which also offers the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum, charges up to Rs 3.6 to 10.5 lakh a year just as tuition fees.
At Oxford Grammar High School in Himayatnagar, the annual tuition fees across classes is about Rs 70,000.
At Little Millennium preschool, the Read to Fly I programme for children aged four to five, the equivalent of lower kindergarten, costs Rs 85,800 a year. This includes tuition fees, two sets of uniforms, some learning materials, and excludes expenses for annual day, sports day, field trips, activity fees, and day care fees.
Unicent School charges tuition fees of Rs 1.35 lakh for class 9, with food and transport costing more, a parent said.
At the Sadhu Vaswani International School in Kompally, parents are paying Rs 1.9 lakh for students in secondary school, including tuition fees, food and transport, with uniforms and books costing nearly an additional Rs 10,000.
Even in a tier-II city such as Warangal, elite schools such as Hyderabad Public School are charging tuition fees of up to Rs 1 lakh a year.
Ahead of school reopening for the academic year 2025-26, the Hyderabad Schools Parents' Association (HSPA), the Dalit Bahujan Front, and various child rights bodies that have been advocating for fee regulation once again called on the government to bring in a fee regulation law. The HSPA has been at the forefront of the legal struggle for years.
“The burden of school fees on parents cannot be put into words. There’s a fear when they think of schools reopening in June. They are under tremendous stress over unpaid fees from the previous year and the fees to be paid for the coming academic year,” a statement from HSPA said.
Dalit Bahujan Front national secretary P Shankar said that even in so-called affordable private schools, tuition fees start anywhere from Rs 20,000 to Rs 1 lakh even for kindergarten. “Every year, there is an arbitrary hike. There are lakhs of domestic and daily wage workers in the city from SC, ST, BC, and minority communities with a monthly income of around Rs 10,000 to 20,000. If they choose private schools, they end up spending 50 to 60% of their income on them. Many of them are going into debt because of school fees,” he said.
Ashish Naredi, an active member of HSPA and the founder of Indic International School in Kompally, said that many schools tend to implement arbitrary hikes every year, depending on market conditions and the school’s popularity. “HSPA has been demanding transparency from schools about fee hikes for the next three to four years. In our school, we have assured parents that for 10 years, the hike will not cross 10% in a given year,” he said.
Parents’ advocacy for fee regulation
In 2009, when YS Rajasekhara Reddy was the chief minister of united Andhra Pradesh, the government had issued an order in favour of parents. A committee for the regulation of fee structure in private unaided schools was formed. It empowered District Fee Regulatory Committees (DFRCs) to approve the fee for each private school within its jurisdiction for a three-year period, allowing annual hikes based on the increase in Consumer Price Index (CPI).
This was challenged by private schools in the Telangana High Court. The matter reached the Supreme Court, and seven years later, the apex court ruled in 2016 that the state government “can and should constitute district fee regulatory committees” to regulate private school fees.
The court had also observed that the government could have easily formed DFRCs and notified fees under Section 7 the Andhra Pradesh Educational Institutions (Regulation of Admissions and Prohibition of Capitation Fee) Act, 1983.
Section 7 of the Act says, “It shall be competent for the government by notification, to regulate the tuition fee or any other fee that may be levied and collected by any educational institution in respect of each class of students.”
However, the government does not issue any such notifications “since the matter is in court”, said Hyderabad District Educational Officer (DEO) R Rohini. “If we receive any requests for a fee concession based on parents’ financial status, those are considered,” she said.
“There have been multiple government orders and provisions for fee regulation, but there is no competent authority to implement them,” said Venkat Sainath Kadapa, general secretary of HSPA.
Following the 2016 SC ruling, the issue gained momentum again in Telangana. The Tirupati Rao Committee was constituted by the government, which submitted its report in December 2017, allowing an annual fee hike of 10%. Parents’ groups objected, saying existing high fees had to first be curbed and such a blanket hike could not be allowed.
Since then, following multiple petitions, the High Court pulled up the state government in 2021 for failing to frame a fee regulation law. Months later, in January 2022, the previous Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) government announced that it would enact such a legislation from the coming academic year. This did not happen, and in December 2023, the Congress government came to power.
Govt sits on fee regulation law
The Telangana Education Commission constituted by the Revanth Reddy government and headed by retired IAS officer Akunuri Murali has submitted a draft Fee Regulation Bill to the government.
The draft Bill proposes establishing the Telangana Private School Fee Regulatory and Monitoring Commission, headed by a retired High Court or Supreme Court judge, or a retired IAS officer.
“The Commission shall have the power to regulate and monitor the fees across all private unaided schools and junior colleges in the state from preschool to class 12 and duly developing parameters of fee structure,” including schools with CBSE, ICSE, IB, and IGCSE curriculum.
The Bill proposes that this Commission group private schools into different categories, based on their location, extent of land, infrastructure, extra-curricular activities, type of teachers, or school head, and fix an upper limit on fees.
The Commission would revise this fee structure once every three of four years. Meanwhile, schools can revise their fees based on the Consumer Price Index without exceeding the existing limit.
School managements, including the Telangana Recognised School Management Association (TRSMA), have been urging the government to revise the draft Bill, arguing that it shouldn’t cause financial strain on schools.
Professor PL Vishweswar Rao, member, Telangana Education Commission, said that during discussions with school managements, the Commission asked elite schools providing the Cambridge IGCSE curriculum to justify their fees.
“Such schools say that they have teachers trained in the UK, cricket instructors who were Ranji Trophy players, etc. They say they pay their directors a monthly salary of up to Rs 5 lakh, and teachers’ salaries over Rs 2 lakh. But even accounting for the facilities they provide, and a revenue margin of up to 15% and accounting for the school’s future growth, we arrived at an annual school fee of around Rs 6 lakh per student. But these schools are charging over Rs 20 lakh. They want us to consider present day land values of properties purchased several years ago while calculating fee caps,” Vishweshwar Rao said.
While some even argue that parents do not have a problem paying such high fees in elite schools, the government cannot allow complete laxity in such cases, he argued. “The State needs to hold schools accountable. It cannot allow profiteering in education,” he said.
The Andhra Pradesh Educational Institutions (Establishment, Recognition, Administration and Control of Schools Under Private Managements) Rules, 1993, recommends that schools use fees collected from students as follows: Only 5% as income to management, 15% for school maintenance (rent, electricity, water, stationery, laboratory, audits, general upkeep, etc.), 15% for developing the school (upgrading facilities, expansion), 50% towards staff salaries, and 15% towards staff benefits such as gratuity, provident fund, and insurance.
Vishweshwar Rao also mentioned that parents have complained about schools forcing them to buy textbooks, uniforms, and other items from them in an attempt to make additional profits.
The draft Bill prohibits any additional donation or admission fee, books fee, uniform fee, etc. It also bars private schools from doing “business” such as selling school uniforms, text books, or stationery. It only allows charges for optional facilities of transport, food, boarding, and excursions.
Ashish Naredi of Indic International School argued that parents and government need to be “pragmatic” about such additional costs. “Schools often have tie-ups with publishers etc., who sometimes offer a bulk discount for parents or a commission for schools. But many parents prefer this arrangement, as it prevents the hassle of going to different places to buy books, uniforms etc. The government can check if the pricing is transparent and if they are exceeding the maximum retail price,” he said.
Meanwhile, the state government has been hesitant about introducing the Bill in the Assembly citing concerns over whether it will pass the scrutiny of courts, said Vishweswar Rao. The draft Bill has been forwarded to the government again with some revisions and reasoning to quell any legal concerns, he said.
HSPA general secretary Venkat said, “My children were four and six when I started advocating for fee regulation. They are now 15 and 17, almost out of school. I have been fighting this fight for over a decade, but nothing has moved forward.”
“The intention of the government is not clear. If they really had the will, they would have passed the Bill by now,” he argued.