The Gujarat Assembly on 10 September amended the Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Act, 1972, raising the fine for illegal teacher appointments in aided schools from Rs 1,000 to as much as Rs 10 lakh. Education Minister Pradyuman Vaja moved the bill, and the House passed it by a majority voice vote after the Congress registered dissent over some provisions, ThePrint reported from a PTI dispatch. It was one of seven bills cleared in the three-day monsoon session.
What the amendment changes
The penalties, as The Hans India and Global Education News set them out:
- Illegal appointment of a principal or teacher in an aided school: up to Rs 10 lakh, against Rs 1,000 earlier.
- Running an unregistered secondary or higher secondary school: up to two years in jail and a fine of up to Rs 15 lakh. The old fine ran to Rs 1-2 lakh.
- Closing a registered school mid-session without six months’ notice: up to Rs 20 lakh, against Rs 1,000 earlier. The six-month notice rule stays.
The law now separates grant-in-aid schools from non-grant private schools in clearer terms. For aided schools, the state will prescribe qualifications and the selection process for principals, teachers, special educators and non-teaching staff, and the state’s reservation policy will apply to that recruitment. The amendment also creates a legal basis for appointing special educators for children with disabilities, and it widens the board’s membership to include teachers from registered non-government schools and more representatives from parents’ associations.
Why the old fines stopped working
A Rs 1,000 penalty written into a 1972 law carries almost no weight in 2026. Gujarat pays the salaries of teachers in grant-in-aid schools, but the trusts that run those schools make the appointments. When a management appoints someone outside the prescribed process, the state still ends up funding that salary for decades. A fine smaller than one month of the appointee’s pay gave managements little reason to follow the rules. At Rs 10 lakh, an irregular appointment becomes a real financial risk for the trust.
The closure penalty addresses a separate problem. A private school that shuts in the middle of an academic year leaves families looking for seats after admissions have closed, and pupils in Classes 10 and 12 face board exams in a new school. The six-month notice rule existed already. The Rs 20 lakh fine gives the education department something to enforce it with.
What it means for parents and teachers
If your child studies in an aided school, the special educator clause matters most. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 already requires schools to include children with disabilities, but aided schools had no clear statutory route to hire trained staff for them. The amendment supplies one, though the state still has to sanction posts and funding before anyone gets hired.
Job seekers stand to gain from the reservation clause and state-set qualifications, which make aided-school hiring look more like government recruitment. School trusts lose some control over whom they hire. The PTI and IANS reports do not say which provisions the Congress objected to.
What to watch
The bill needs the Governor’s assent. After that, the Education Department has to notify rules on qualifications, the selection process and the special educator posts, and those rules will decide how much of the law reaches classrooms. Parents should also track whether district education officers impose the new fines, and on which managements.
Sources: ThePrint (PTI), The Hans India (IANS), Global Education News, Punjab Kesari
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.