KARACHI, July 8: Apart from some reputed private educational institutions, a majority of the private schools in Sindh especially in Karachi is being run purely on commercial basis.

A large number of private schools have neither devised quality syllabi nor hired trained teachers. The poor standard of education being imparted at such schools has become a great cause of concern for parents. Parents are perturbed so much that they have started approaching the heads of a few reputed private schools in the city for admissions of their children.

According to a provincial education department report, over 36,000 private schools are functioning in Sindh and those located in every nook and corner numbered around 30,000 with sole purpose of making profits. About 6,000 private schools in the province have autonomous systems and chains, which offer quality education, but charge exorbitant fees.

The government had conducted the survey of registered and unregistered private schools in the year 1999, according to which, a vast majority of private schools are yet to be registered with the education department.

The report pointed out that private schools were exploiting parents for providing quality education to their children. Most of the parents used to believe that all private schools offered quality education, the report stated, while adding that the parents prefer private schools, no matter how much is the financial burden that they have to bear.

Education department officials said that most of the private schools’ teachers were hardly matriculate. In a few cases, they were graduates, they said. Taking advantage of their inability to find jobs, the private schools hire teachers on as little as Rs1,000 per month, they added.

Some government school teachers are of the view that students of private schools do not perform well, as compared to those studying in government schools. As a consequence of substandard syllabi taught in private schools from Class I to VIII, students had to face problems while switching over to the syllabus of Sindh Textbook Board in Class-IX, they maintained.

Owners of such schools usually give fancy names to their institutions to attract parents, and the idea works most of the time.

Mrs Safia Waseem, whose daughters are studying in two different private schools in Class-VII, inform that the schools offered different subjects, books and fee structures. She said private schools just burdened their students with books rather than concentrating on imparting quality education.

The private schools running in collaboration with foreign school systems can only be afforded by the well-off.

According to the report compiled by the education department, about 50 private entrepreneurs, who had opened one school each over a decade back, had been running chains of schools all over the country. Such schools followed the syllabi being taught at the educational institutions in Singapore, the UK and the US.

Educationist Rakhshanda Abbasi suggests that the government should either constitute a board for all private schools to develop a uniform policy on syllabi or ask them to introduce books for textbook board to improve the quality of education. There should also be a criteria for appointing teachers and deciding their salary packages, she added.

Principal of a renowned private school, Ms Nomana, said that the private schools charging high fees largely concentrated on improving the creative power of students and taught quality books of international standard in all classes.

The education department officials, however, admitted that the flawed policies and the poor monitoring had allowed the private sector to run schools purely on commercial basis. They also admitted that school business had become an industry.

Several ministers had been reportedly making claims in the past that the government would establish a regulatory authority for privately managed schools to monitor the fee structure, syllabi and other affairs of the private schools, but nothing was done in this regard. This could be the reason behind the poor response attracted by the government for fresh registration of private schools in Karachi.

According to official sources, the education department of city government has received about 1,700 applications so far, both for registration and renewal of registration from private schools.

The Sindh education department had invited applications from private schools some three months back and had repeatedly extended the date for registration.

Under the Sindh Private Educational Institutions (Regulation and Control) Ordinance 2001, private schools are required to get a fresh registration or renewal for running a private educational institution in the province.

It can be mentioned here that about 2,700 private schools exist in Karachi alone.—PPI