School Management Software in Maharashtra: Fee Act, MSBSHSE & RTE

Running a school in Maharashtra means answering to a committee of your own parents before you can revise a fee. The state's Fee Act routes every fee proposal through the school's PTA Executive Committee and caps hikes at 15% once every two years; MSBSHSE runs SSC and HSC exams through nine divisional boards; RTE 25% admissions are allotted by an online state lottery; and SARAL makes entering every student's data on the state portal compulsory. On top of all of it, a 2020 Act makes Marathi a compulsory subject in every school in the state, whatever the board.

The scale is large: as per the UDISE+ 2023-24 report, Maharashtra has 1,08,237 schools with about 2.14 crore students and 7.38 lakh teachers. This guide covers what applies specifically to Maharashtra schools — the Fee Act and its committee process, the state board, RTE admissions, and state reporting — and where a school management platform like Edacify honestly fits into that work.

#The Fee Act: your PTA approves the fee

Maharashtra regulates private school fees through the Maharashtra Educational Institutions (Regulation of Fee) Act, 2011 (enacted as Maharashtra Act No. VII of 2014). It applies from pre-primary through higher secondary and junior colleges recognised by the government — aided, unaided and minority institutions alike. Unlike Gujarat, where a government-appointed committee vets fees, Maharashtra puts the first approval inside the school itself.

#The PTA Executive Committee process

Every school must constitute a Parent-Teacher Association under Section 4 of the Act. Its Executive Committee — with parent members chosen by lottery, and parents required to outnumber teacher and management members combined — is the body that approves the fee. The school must submit its proposed fee, with supporting records, to the Executive Committee at least six months before the next academic year begins, and the committee has 30 days to decide.

The 2018 amendment (Maharashtra Act No. XXVIII of 2019, published 26 August 2019) added the rule most school owners now plan around: the proposed fee cannot exceed the previous academic year's fee plus 15%, and fees may be revised only after two years from the last approval. The same amendment let schools declare a binding standard-wise fee structure at admission for the Std 1–5 and 6–10 blocks, required an aggrieved parents group of at least 25% of parents to challenge a fee decision, and mandated that schools offer monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly payment options.

#DFRC appeals and penalties

Disputes go to Divisional Fee Regulatory Committees (DFRCs), each chaired by a retired District Judge and including the Divisional Chairman of the State Board, a Chartered Accountant, a retired education officer and the Regional Deputy Director of Education. In February 2020 the state approved DFRCs for the Mumbai, Pune, Nashik, Nagpur and Aurangabad divisions. Penalties under Section 16 escalate from ₹1–5 lakh for a first offence to ₹2–10 lakh for a second, with possible imprisonment of three to six months.

The Act is also under active political attention: the School Education Minister has announced proposed amendments to curb charges under non-academic heads such as camps and labs, with reported proposals including single-parent complaints and area-based fee slabs. As of August 2026, though, no Fee Act amendment bill has been passed — the 2011 Act as amended in 2019 remains the operative law.

#MSBSHSE: SSC, HSC and nine divisional boards

The Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE), headquartered in Pune and constituted under Maharashtra Act No. 41 of 1965, conducts the SSC (Class 10) and HSC (Class 12) examinations twice a year through nine divisional boards: Pune, Nagpur, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad), Mumbai, Kolhapur, Amravati, Nashik, Latur and Konkan. A Maharashtra school deals with its divisional board, not directly with Pune — which is also why the Divisional Chairman sits on the DFRC that hears fee appeals.

The scale is enormous: roughly 17 lakh SSC and 15 lakh HSC candidates sit the main exams, with about 6 lakh more at supplementary exams, across 23,000+ schools under the SSC stream and 10,000+ higher secondary schools and junior colleges under HSC. For a school, board exams are the visible tip; underneath sits a year of internal assessment, unit tests and term exams whose marks need to be captured subject-wise and student-wise as they happen. A structured exam management system makes that continuous record the default rather than an end-of-term reconstruction.

#RTE 25% admissions in Maharashtra

Under Section 12(1)(c) of the RTE Act, private unaided schools in Maharashtra reserve 25% of entry-level seats for children from weaker and disadvantaged sections. Admissions run through the state's RTE 25% Admission Portal: parents apply online, and where applications exceed seats an online lottery allots them, producing a merit list followed by waiting lists. Selected children then complete document verification — birth, identity, residence and income where applicable — and the school confirms the admission on the portal. The 2026-27 round gives a sense of scale: 8,701 participating schools, 1,14,826 seats and 2,89,337 applications.

Reimbursement is the sore point. Under RTE Section 12(2) the state reimburses the lower of its per-child expenditure or the school's actual fee; Maharashtra earlier reimbursed ₹17,670 per child, later reduced to ₹8,000 as reported in July 2021. Arrears are chronic — schools have claimed around ₹450 crore pending since 2012-13, and for 2019-20 only ₹200 crore of the ₹624.63 crore required was disbursed. The practical lesson: a reimbursement claim stands on the student actually being on your rolls and attending, so student-wise enrolment and attendance records for RTE admittees need to be beyond question.

#SARAL, Shalarth and UDISE+

Maharashtra's integrated education platform is SARAL — Systematic Administrative Reforms for Achieving Learning by Students — and the state has made it compulsory for schools to enter all student information on it. Its modules cover the Student Portal (enrolment, student details, inter-school transfers), the School Portal (facilities, infrastructure, enrolment, staffing and performance data used for audits and inspections), the Staff and Sanstha portals, RTE 25% admission, PM POSHAN, eMarksheet and more. Government and aided schools additionally run staff salaries through Shalarth, the state's online payroll system — a system under intense scrutiny since a 2026 SIT probe into fraudulent Shalarth IDs.

Alongside SARAL sits the annual UDISE+ census that every recognised school files nationally; the state education portal itself publishes UDISE abstracts year by year. None of this is paperwork you can invent at filing time — SARAL entries mirror your actual enrolment, transfers and staffing through the year.

#Marathi, MEPS and the Self-financed Schools Act

Three more Maharashtra-specific rules deserve a place on the compliance list. First, the Maharashtra Compulsory Teaching and Learning of Marathi Language in Schools Act, 2020 makes Marathi a compulsory subject in every school in the state — CBSE, CISCE and international boards included — phased in for Classes I–X from 2020-21, with fines up to ₹1 lakh and the risk of cancellation of recognition or NOC for violations. Marathi has to sit in the timetable, the subject list and the assessment record like any other subject.

Second, the Maharashtra Employees of Private Schools (Conditions of Service) Regulation Act, 1977 and its 1981 Rules govern recruitment and service conditions of teaching and non-teaching staff in recognised private schools, with School Tribunals for disputes — and they restrict teachers from running coaching classes. Third, new private schools are governed by the Maharashtra Self-financed Schools (Establishment and Regulation) Act, 2012; an amendment bill passed by the assembly in March 2026 allows national-level institutions to establish schools in the state, lets Classes 11–12 institutions seek permission for Classes 1–10, and adds penalties for abrupt school closures.

#How Edacify helps a Maharashtra school

Edacify is a school management platform built India-first, and the overlap with Maharashtra's paperwork is direct:

• Attendance you can produce on demand. Teachers mark attendance digitally — including face-recognition attendance — so any student's attendance history, an RTE admittee's included, is retrievable in seconds when a reimbursement claim or an inspection asks for it.
• Exam and marks records, structured. Formative and summative exams, unit tests and term exams are recorded subject-wise and student-wise — Marathi alongside every other subject — with performance analytics that show class and student trends across the year.
• Student master data in one place. Standards, divisions and student profiles are maintained centrally, so SARAL entries, UDISE+ filing and the enrolment numbers in a PTA fee proposal all start from one clean, current list.
• AI-generated practice, teacher-controlled. Teachers generate quizzes by topic and difficulty, edit every question before it reaches students, and use the results to spot struggling students early — useful in the run-up to SSC and HSC years.
• Parents in the loop, safely. Notices reach parents through the app, anonymous student feedback gives children a voice, and QR-verified student pickup adds a safety layer at the gate.

It works the same for MSBSHSE, CBSE or CISCE affiliation — the platform manages standards, divisions, subjects and assessments without assuming any one board — and it also supports coaching classes, playgroups and colleges. There is a 21-day free trial, and pricing starts at ₹50 per student per month.

#Frequently asked questions