RAWALPINDI, Sept 8: About 4,000 schools functioning in the private sector are not registered with the district education directorate.

According to sources, about 1,486 private schools are registered with the government, whereas the number has crossed the 5,000 mark. There is a school in almost every street. In some streets, even several schools are operating. Private schools’ owners alleged that education directorate officials of Rawalpindi district, received hefty bribes from the owners to give them permission to run their institutions without being registered.

In fact, they added, the schools’ owners applied for registration, but the registration, but the officials concerned resorted to underhand deals and, at times, even created hurdles in the process to compel the applicants to pay bribes. This is the reason that these schools do not follow any rules in fixing their charges and handling other matters.

The school administrations, the sources said, fixed charges arbitrarily, irrespective to the level of education they imparted.

According to government rules, the education directorate is bound to grant registration to a school within 90 days of the filing of application for the same. Similarly, the owner is supposed to apply for the school’s registration within 90 days of its formal opening, failing which a fine amounting to Rs100 per day has to be paid. The local education directorate, the sources said, did not have any statistics about the private schools being run in the district. The existing official data in this regard has also been collected through a special survey conducted by the Punjab education department.

According to these statistics, only 120 primary, 853 middle and 513 high schools are registered with the education directorate, whereas the actual number of these schools is much more than this. As per unofficial statistics, about 2,700 high, 1,000 middle and 1,800 primary schools are functioning in the district without being registered with the education directorate. The registration fee for a primary schools is Rs5,000; for middle schools, Rs10,000 to Rs15,000; and for high school, Rs15,000 to Rs25,000.

The recognition by the Rawalpindi Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education is another big problem. Out of thousands of high schools, the number of board-recognized institutions is even less than 100. Here also bribes and commission work openly on a scale much larger than that in the registration process, the sources said.

The board’s recognition fees are as high as Rs40,000, in addition to Rs10,000 for the visit/inspection of board team, and Rs5,000 for another visit of board officials to verify the school’s status. The board’s recognition is renewed either on annual basis or after every three years, depending on the officials concerned.