KARACHI, May 22: Though the new academic session has started on April 1, a number of government schools are not yet clear about fees structure and have reportedly charged an excessive amount from students.
Sources in the school circle said there was confusion on the issue of fees as the authorities failed to deliver a related circular to schools on time. “Some are charging fees under the new structure, while others are collecting the fees that were applicable till last year.”
It was learnt that in September last the Sindh Education Department had issued a notification saying that the government had decided not to charge tuition fee from any student enrolled at the government or nationalized schools in the province. Under the notification, students up to class X were exempted from tuition fee from the academic session 2001 till further order.
In the first week of April this year, the executive district officer (education) passed on the notification to all the district officers for strict compliance. The notification was again supposed to be redirected to all the heads of secondary schools for necessary action and compliance, added the sources.
However, the authorities failed to ensure that the government circular was delivered to all schools and in a meeting held in the last week of April, many of the school heads raised the issue and maintained that they had already charged fees according to the old structure as they had not received the new circular.
The sources said that many of the schools in New Karachi, Nazimabad, North Karachi, Liaquatabad, Orangi Town, Malir and Lyari had charged an excess amount of Rs150 under the old schedule of fees.
In line with the new circular, which does not allow the collection of tuition fee, now the newly-admitted students of classes VI to VII are required to pay Rs124, while class IX students should pay Rs134 each, inclusive of Rs10 and Rs20 as admission fee, claimed the sources.
When some of the school heads were contacted by this reporter, they said that the fees received in excess were refundable, provided the education authorities issued a clear guidelines on the subject.
“We are confused about admission fees as there is no clear instructions in this regard,” said a senior schoolteachers, adding that under the old policy they had been receiving an amount equal to one month’s tuition fee as admission fee from the new comers but now there was no concept of tuition fee then what would be the yardstick for collecting the admission fee.
Some of the teachers pointed out that admission fee should also be waved as collecting the meagre amount and then depositing the same in government treasury would be a cumbersome process.
However, others said that students should be charged an amount as admission fee in order to keep their name in the government books, since other funds like students fund, development fund, games fund or PTA fund, are kept as private fund and at the disposal of school heads.
Interestingly, a majority of the students are not issued any receipt against payment at schools, since the government has been failing to maintain any system of issuing official receipt books to schools. Mostly, the names are maintained in school register, while some of the school heads like to issue privately-printed receipts, added the sources.
