'School expenses rise by 160% in 8 years'

While politicians battle it out over inflation and the prices of onions and brinjals, the probable blow for the Indian middle class with its obsession for a ’good’ education are the rising school expenses. According to an ASSOCHAM survey, the costs of sending a child to school have risen by 160% in the last 8 years. What’s more, this figure is exclusive of the tuition fees hiked every now and then.

The survey, done under the aegis of the Social Development Foundation of ASSOCHAM on ’Rising school expenses vis-a-vis dilemma of young parents’ says annual school expenses for a single child excluding tuition fees have risen from Rs 25,000 in 2000 to Rs 65,000 in 2008 while the average annual income of fairly well-off parents has not risen by more than 30% in the same period. The average tuition fees for a private school is Rs 35,000 per year, with Rs 30,000-35,000 per year as expense for a host of ’overheads’. An estimated 3 crore children in the country study in private schools, says the survey.

The 2,000 working parents across were surveyed across nine cities—Delhi, Mumbai, Lucknow, Dehradun, Pune, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai and Chandigarh—during April and May this year. One in 10 respondents said the cost of schooling did affect the choice of school. These were parents of young enough kids who had the option of changing schools. Sixty-five per cent respondents said more than half of their salary was spent on their children’s education while 50% conceded schooling was actually a ’strain’ on the family budget.

Nearly 60% of parents felt education had become a business and that the high tuition fees did not actually indicate the academic standards of a school. Rather, it indicated a demand-supply function so that school managements could effect erratic fee hikes every year—something parents can not protest. Even private preparatory schools charge Rs 25,000 a term, the survey says.

Said a parent with two children studying in a very reputed chain of schools, ’Every year there is a hike. Every few days there is something or the other in school for which I have to cough up more money.’

Transport has emerged as one of the most expensive components of a child’s schooling with an average annual cost of Rs 12,000 per child. Packed lunches cost Rs 9,600 per year per child and shoes cost Rs 4,000-5,000 per year per child.

Said Rakhi Sengupta, whose daughter studies in a reputed private school in south Delhi, ’It’s all a racket but we can do nothing about it.’ This ’brand consciousness" too finds a mention in the survey.