The new academic session has heralded bad news for parents whose children are school bound.

Most city schools have raised their fees and a few have also revised the transportation charges passing on the financial burden to the guardians. The percentage of hike, however, varied from one school to another (see chart) .

While Radiant International School increased its fee by around 21 per cent, DAV Shastrinagar hiked its transportation charges by 75 per cent. Radiant increased the fee from Rs 1,900 to Rs 2,300 for classes VI to X. It has hiked the transportation charges too.

On what led to the fee hike, Radhika K., the vice-principal of Radiant International School, said: “We have to give teachers a salary hike. Also, we introduced smart classes last year. For that, we had to increase the number of classrooms, which pushed out expenditure northward.”

DAV Shastrinagar raised its fee from Rs 1,020 to Rs 1,250 for LKG to Class V. Gyan Niketan hiked its transportation charges by 10 per cent.

Notre Dame Academy has sent information to guardians that they would hike the fee by a minimum of 10 per cent from the new session.

Kunal Singh, a resident of Gola Road, who has a schoolgoing child, feels there should be a regulatory body to decide on school fees and its structuring. “The parents are the ones who suffer the most and there is no one to check the autocracy of the schools,” he said.

However, the worst hit are parents who have more than one school-going child.Boring Road resident Pankaj Kumar said: “I have two children studying in different schools. We cannot stop educating our children. The schools have made it a trend to increase fees every year. They don’t have any sympathy for parents.”