Fee–salary linkage model? |
Each year in Kashmir, the same argument returns with renewed intensity. Parents protest rising school fees. Schools defend themselves with rising costs. Government steps in with circulars and warnings. For a few weeks, there is noise. Then the system settles back into the same uneasy silence, until the next hike, the next protest, the next cycle. Something deeper is being missed.
The crisis is not only about how much schools charge. It is about what happens to the money after it is collected. Parents pay more, yet classrooms do not always improve in the way that matters most. Teachers, who stand at the centre of learning, often remain underpaid, overworked, and uncertain. This gap between fee and fairness is where the real problem lies. We have tried controlling fees. We have tried approvals and restrictions. But controlling the price without examining the distribution has produced limited results. A system can comply on paper and still remain unjust in practice. What is needed is not another layer of control, but a shift in principle.
A simple idea can do this. Link the fee a school charges directly to what it pays its teachers. Call it the Fee–Salary Linkage Model. It rests on a basic expectation, if a school charges more from parents, it must pay more to teachers. Not as goodwill, not as a promise, but as a rule. To make this practical, the model can be expressed through a clear five-tier structure. Each fee bracket carries a minimum salary obligation. There is no ambiguity, no room for interpretation. For........