PESHAWAR: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-led provincial government, like its predecessor, is unable to regulate thousands of private schools which enjoy the status of holy cow, according to officials.

“No government’s authority can challenge the decision of the private schools particularly regarding increase in different fees; teachers’ qualification and their meagre salaries; closure of schools for summer, winter and spring vacations; and students’ affairs etc,” officials in elementary and secondary education department told Dawn.

They said that currently, there was no fee structure or categorisation of the private schools. The owners of the schools increased fee on their own, they said. Despite parents’ complaints to the government, neither the education department nor the education boards took action against the private schools to give relief to the parents, they added.

Several parents of students told Dawn whenever someone lodged complaint with the education department against the private schools, the officials of education department didn’t entertain it rather referred them to the board of intermediate and secondary education in the respective administrative division.

The government has established regularity authorities at the level of each education board across the province to supervise, regulate and register private schools. The authorities have been functioning under Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Registration and Functioning of Private Educational Institutions Ordinance, 2001.

Sources say regulatory authorities, set up at board level, are toothless

However, sources in the education department said that the ordinance was silent on many issues the parents confronted with. They termed the regulatory authorities toothless.

“My son is the student of nursery class at a prominent private school. The school administration has asked him to pay Rs700 as examination fee,” Ishaq Khan, a resident of Garhi Atta Mohammad, told Dawn.

He said that he approached the school administration and told it that the amount was too much for a student of nursery. “I asked them that my son would need three or four answer sheets to write English and Urdo alphabets and initial digits then why he was asked to bring Rs700,” Mr Khan said.

He said that the school administration told him that it was the decisions of the owners and all parents were bound to obey.

Realising the grievances of the parents, the previous provincial government had initiated regulating private schools by proposing Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Private Schools Regulatory Authority Bill, 2012 for establishing a regulatory authority but in vain.

The drafting of the proposed bill, consultation with different stakeholders and finally tabling of the bill had taken around three years but all the efforts proved a futile exercise when the Awami National Party-led provincial government bowed to the pressure of the private schools and resultantly the law couldn’t be enacted till end of the tenure of the government.

The Peshawar High Court has also issued directives to the previous and present governments on several occasions to make proper legislation for regulating private educational institutions. But like the previous government, the present one has also turned a deaf ear to the orders of the court.

Minister for Elementary and Secondary Education Mohammad Atif Khan, when contacted, said that the PTI government was in favour of keeping a check on the private schools. “The private schools should be controlled but let us first improve standard of the government schools,” he said.

The minister said that improvement in government schools would enable the education department to take decision about the control of the private schools. He said that education department was utilising Rs8 billion to provide basic facilities to the government schools.

Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2015

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