Petitioners Advocate duo Shree Krishna Subedi and Gopal Nath Yogi maintains that Pabson has failed to comply with previous apex court order on fee hike.

Pabson announced to make an 18 percent increment in tuition in the new academic session beginning next month. The 12th general convention of the Pabson decided the hike to “balance its increased expenditures in teachers’ salary and other operations”.

Petitioners maintain that the apex court in 2012 directed private schools to not hike their tuition fees every year and asked the Office of the Prime Minister, the Council of Ministers and the Ministry of Education to effectively monitor compliance from schools. The court directed the schools to hike their fees only once in three years.

The verdict also said that schools cannot charge fees without approval from concerned government agencies.

The SC had further ordered schools to not increase charges for admission forms and placed a ceiling on expenditure for advertisements. Schools running up to grade eight will be allowed to spend a maximum of Rs 300,000 on advertisement while secondary schools can spend up to Rs 500,000.

All schools will have to submit the details of their total advertisement expenditure to the respective District Education Office by mid-March.

The writ petition on Monday cites the provision in the directives to run institutional schools (2069), which mentions that admission charge cannot exceed one month’s tuition fee.

Similarly, the directive also states that the schools cannot charge admission fee to students on promotion to a new grade. The petitioners also seek an order to check distribution of sub-standard educational materials.

Defendants in the petition include the Prime Minister’s Office, Ministry of Education, Department of Education, Curriculum Development Centre and Pabson.