PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Private Schools Regulatory Authority is struggling to prevent elite schools from increasing fee on their own for lacking powers, officials insist.

The PSRA was formed by the last PTI government in 2017 through legislation to provide relief to the students’ parents, who had no forum to approach against private schools over complaints about fee and annual increase in it.

Officials of the PSRA told Dawn that the authority won’t be able to provide any relief to such people if the existing law, the regulations made under it, and the composition of its board were not changed.

Officials insist things won’t change until PSRA properly empowered

They said several MPAs, who were part of the making and passage of the KP Regulatory Authority Act, 2017, owned chains of schools in the province and therefore, the PSRA was a toothless body as it couldn’t seal lawbreaking schools.

The officials said the original Act passed by the assembly had empowered the PSRA to lock and close private schools over the continued violation of the law after the imposition of fine.

They, however, said the law was amended within a month withdrawing the power of sealing campuses from the authority.

The officials said the amendment changed the words ‘close or lock or seal such school’ with ‘take such punitive action as may be prescribed’.

They complained that little fine was imposed on private schools for not charging students the fee fixed by the PSRA, while that fine could be imposed twice only.

The officials insisted that the fine was too little compared to the profit earned by private schools on a monthly basis.

They also regretted that the law and regulations were silent on further action if the schools kept overcharging students even after the imposition of fine.

The officials said the regulator issued circulars to private schools time and again in light of the law and regulation that the charging of ‘capitation fee’ was not permissible, but they fell on deaf ears.

The regulations define the capitation fee as ‘any kind of donation or contribution or payment, by whatever name, other than the fee approved by the Regulatory Authority’.

Section 7, sub-clause 4(V) of the regulations says, “no schools or person is allowed to demand or receive capitation fee at the time of admission or afterwards.”

The officials said the authority was also struggling to enforce the Supreme Court’s orders for private schools to charge half of the monthly fee during the summer vacation.

They also complained that the schools had issued fee slips to students for the upcoming summer vacation in advance.

The officials said the PSRA’s board had 14 members with the secretary of the elementary and secondary education department being its chairman but private schools and parents didn’t have equal representation in it as four members belonged to the former and three to the latter.

They insisted that the government had named parents from the elite class as the board members though they had no or little concern about high fee or other charges.

The officials said such members rarely attended the board meetings and therefore, decisions were made in favour of private schools.

They also claimed that two other board members named by the government from among educationists had been seen protect the interests of private schools.

When contacted, PSRA managing director Asad Haroon said since assuming the power a month ago, he had imposed fine on dozens of schools across the province for violating the PSRA Act and regulations.

He said he had set up a cell to address the people’s complaints against private schools.

“Efforts are under way to streamline the affairs of private schools in light of the Act and regulations,” he said.

Published in Dawn, May 2nd, 2019