KARACHI, Oct 8: The federal ministry of education is planning to set up an autonomous body to regulate the working and functioning of private educational institutions in the country.

An official of the ministry told PPI on Tuesday that the main objective of the regulatory regime would be to monitor the private educational institutions whether they fulfilled the prescribed standards, both in terms of physical infrastructure and faculty.

He said the decision had been taken keeping in view the mushroom growth of educational institutions in the private sector in utter disregard of educational standards.

Commenting on the prerequisites required to run an institution, he said physical infrastructure such as building and its landscape, laboratories, classrooms and quality of staff would be given importance before allowing anyone to establish a school or college in the private sector.

When asked as to who would determine the fee schedule of these institutions, he said the ministry had decided to leave the issue to the public itself.

“If someone is satisfied with the quality of education and is willing to pay the steep fees, it is not the ministry’s business to interfere,” he remarked.

The education ministry had formulated a package which, among other things, provided for taking over of government schools by the private sector under the adopt-a-school scheme.

The ministry, under education reforms 2001-2004, had also proposed leasing public sector institutions to the private sector for improving and strengthening its management and utilization of their buildings.

“A key element of the education sector reforms agenda is the development of partnership between private and public sectors and with the NGOs at the elementary, secondary, technical and higher levels with a strategic role for the private institutions,” another official said.

The officials said the proposed package of incentives for the private sector included provision of land, free of cost or at concessional rates in rural areas, utilities such as electricity, gas to be assessed at non-commercial rates, liberal grant of charters, exemption of customs duty on import of educational material and 50 per cent exemption in income tax for faculty, management and support staff.

According to a survey there are 36,096 private institutions in Pakistan: 66.4 per cent in Punjab, 17.9 per cent in Sindh, 12.3 per cent in NWFP, 1.5 per cent in Balochistan, 0.9 per cent in FATA and one per cent in Islamabad capital area.

Overall, 39 per cent of the institutions are in the rural and 61 per cent in the urban areas.

The survey showed that 14,758 schools (43.5 per cent) were in the primary sector, 12,250 in the middle (37 per cent), 5,940 in the secondary (17.5 per cent) and only 695 (2 per cent) in the higher secondary and above.