July 10, 2003	Thursday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 9,1424

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ISLAMABAD, July 9: The government is considering to introduce a bill in parliament for regulation and rationalization of the fee structure of the private educational institutions in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT).

“The ministry of law, justice and parliamentary affairs has asked the education ministry to frame a law on regulation of the private educational institutions and get it passed from the National Assembly first instead of promulgating it through an ordinance,” Education Minister Zobaida Jalal told Dawn here on Wednesday.

Earlier, the cabinet in the former military government had decided to set up a regulatory body to supervise the affairs of the private educational institutions in the federal capital because majority of the schools in the Islamabad Capital Territory were unregistered and were not observing any standard criteria for textbooks, teachers or fee structure.

The education minister said the law was being framed and would be submitted to the law ministry soon for vetting.

According to the Pakistan Education and School Atlas, there are 710 schools in the capital out of which 420 are in the public sector, while 290 are in the private sector. Of 710, there are 413 schools at the primary level (264 public and 149 private), 123 schools at the middle level (50 government and 73 private) and 174 at the high and higher secondary level (106 public and 68 private).

The minister conceded that the majority of private schools in Islamabad had their own curriculum, which was not in conformity with that adopted by the public schools.

“Since the curriculum for the public educational institutions has already been revised and a national curricula has been devised, we would like to see a standard syllabus for the private schools also,” she said.

The law would also deal with the issue of fee structure in the sense that the private educational institutions would be asked to provide relief to the parents of the poor children by reducing their existing fees when the government had announced a number of incentives for the private educational institutions as a relief package.