October 24, 2008	Friday	Shawwal 24, 1429

KARACHI, Oct 23: A large number of unregistered private schools have adopted an illegal method to get their students enrolled with the Board of Secondary Education Karachi to enable them to take the secondary school certificate examinations.

Under the law all private schools imparting education up to eighth grade are required to get themselves registered with the district officer for education and up to tenth grade with the provincial directorate of private institutions. Unregistered schools are legally not allowed to get their students enrolled with the board of secondary education.

However, thousands of unregistered private schools, which have sprung up in every nook and corner of the city, have got their grade nine students enrolled with the board by sending their enrolment forms through the management of registered schools.

Well-placed sources in the education board said that the management of certain registered schools, which submitted enrolment forms of the students of unregistered schools posing them as their students, charged extra for the service. Ultimately, however, the students suffered as all such expenses were to be borne by them, the sources said. They said the management of some registered schools had in fact made it a business as they earned a handsome amount every year before the annual exams.

When this illegal practice was brought into the notice of director of the provincial directorate of private institutions Mansub Hussain Siddiqui, he said that the directorate had repeatedly issued a circular to all the boards in the province, requesting them not to enrol students of unregistered schools since registration of private schools was a prerequisite for their students’ enrolment with the board.

In reply to a question about the number of registered and unregistered schools in Sindh, Mr Siddiqui said there were 11,000 registered schools and almost an equal number of unregistered schools across the province according to the last survey. Without mentioning when the last survey was conducted, he said more than 70 per cent of the private schools, including registered and unregistered, were functioning in Karachi alone.