KARACHI, June 27: The steering committee of the Sindh education department on Tuesday reconfirmed that all the private and government schools and intermediate colleges would reopen after summer vacations on August 16.

A meeting of the body was held with Sindh Education Secretary Syed Ghulam Ali Pasha in the chair.Briefing about the meeting, additional secretary, Qazi Arif Ali, said that chairmen of educational boards, EDOs (education) and senior officials of the education department discussed the matter pertaining to the reopening of schools in the province after vacations and resolved that the educational institutions, both in the government and private sectors, should resume teaching activities from August 16, as decided earlier by the government.

The meeting, according to the additional secretary, however decided that all those private educational institutions which wanted to conduct teacher training as an in-house activity from the last week of July could do so, without asking their students to report to the schools.

The schools are not allowed to start the teaching process or any other students' activity before August, 16, 2006, he clarified.

Replying to a question, he said that the private schools should abide by the decisions of the steering committee; otherwise they would be prone to actions in line with the provisions of the Sindh Private Schools (Management and Control) Ordinance.

Mr Ali further said that the provincial government had so far not received any directive in writing from the federal education ministry regarding extension of the summer vacations up to August 31.

However, the repeated statements by Federal Education Minister Javed Ashraf Qazi that for the sake of uniformity in all the provinces and the federal capital academic session will start from September 1 have created confusion among students, parents and other stakeholders.

Another official of the education department said that the federal government had allowed Sindh to start its academic session in advance, in view of the fact that it had already delayed commencement of academic session last year. The new academic session in Sindh had commenced on August 1, instead of April 1, with the objective to ensure uninterrupted teaching and learning process, added the official.