'Are you teaching kids or launching them to Mars?': CA rips ₹7 lakh school fee for Grade 1

₹7.35 lakh a year for a child in Grade 1. That’s the price tag CA Kapil Gupta flagged in a LinkedIn post this week, questioning whether schools are “teaching children or launching them to Mars.”

Gupta was reacting to a fee circular for the 2025–26 academic year, where a top-tier private school lists ₹7.35 lakh as the annual fee for its IB Primary Years Programme (Grades 1 to 5), or ₹3.67 lakh per term.

Fees climb steadily: ₹7.75 lakh for Grades 6–8, ₹8.5 lakh for Grades 9–10, and a staggering ₹11 lakh per year for Grades 11 and 12 under the IB Diploma Programme. Even the ICSE stream (Grades 6–10) isn’t far behind at ₹5.94 lakh annually.

“Education and healthcare are supposed to be basic rights, but in our country, they are slowly becoming luxury services,” Gupta wrote. “In the name of IB and international boards, schools have turned this into a business model.”

He argued that these schools prey on parental anxiety by marketing expensive education as the only route to success. “Honestly, with this money many of us completed our entire education. What is there in Grade 1 that costs so much?”

The post takes aim at a system that Gupta believes has drifted far from its purpose. “Private schools have become a centre of organised loot,” he wrote. “Each state government must step in and put a cap on how much fee can be charged, especially at the elementary level.”

The school also demands a one-time, non-refundable admission fee of ₹1 lakh and a ₹1,000 application charge—before tuition even begins.

“If things continue like this, quality education will remain only a dream for middle-class families,” Gupta warned. “Knowledge is for everyone, but today it is being sold like a luxury product.”