MY wife is a teacher at an elite private school chain’s pre-school branch in Lahore. She says the school has switched off airconditioners permanently in a class which has three-year-old children who sweat profusely during classes.

She says the classes, especially the ones on the first floor, get quite hot, but the school administration does not turn the airconditioners on.

Also, the promised increment in the meagre salary of the teachers has also been cancelled. Several other measures have been taken to make parents pressure the government to let schools increase the fee at their will. A pre-schoolgoing child’s fee is more than Rs15,000 a month and there are more than 20 children in a class. This means that almost Rs300,000 is collected from every class. There are two teachers per class and their combined salary is less than Rs50,000, which leaves more than Rs250,000 per class to be spent on administration expenses per class per month.

A school has minimum 10 sections, which means more than Rs25,00,000 for administration expenses for a branch. Big private schools make tens of millions of rupees profit every month, but still employ cheap tactics to make their unjustified demands met. It is true that average expenses increase at approximately 6pc every year, but there is no justification for fee increase of more than 6pc every year.

A citizen

Lahore

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2015

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