After a recent judgment of the Peshawar High Court, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Private Schools Regulatory Authority (PSRA) has now become the focus of attention as the court has ruled that the authority was the competent forum to decide disputes between private schools and students.

These disputes are mostly related to fee especially about the annual fee increase by private schools, concession for siblings studying in the same institution, charging fee during vacations, etc.

These issues continue to linger on for last many years and are still unresolved. After the judgment of the high court the aggrieved parties, parents of students and private schools, would now be approaching the PSRA and if the authority could not resolve the issue then the aggrieved party would be entitled to move the court.

A bench of the court headed by Chief Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth on Sept 25 reserved judgments in around 10 writ petitions challenging different fee-related issues and had pronounced a short order of disposing of all those petitions on Sept 26.

A few days later the court released its detailed judgment wherein it gave different directions to PSRA and different petitioners.

The bench ruled that there was complete mechanism provided in PSRA Act 2017 and PSRA Regulations, 2018, and before approaching the authority it would not be appropriate to enter in the dispute in writ jurisdiction provided under Article 199 of the Constitution.

It is ruled that if the authority fails to decide the matter judiciously or is not attending the complaints of aggrieved person then in that case writ can be entertained as per mandate of Article 199 of the Constitution, therefore at present the writ petitions in this respect are not maintainable.

One of the major disputes was about payment of fee during summer vacations. On May 30, then managing director of PSRA had issued a circular ordering the private schools not to charge summer vacation fee from students.

Subsequently, on July 3 the high court granted interim relief to students and directed that no fee should be charged from students till further order. In the meantime, the circular was withdrawn by PSRA through a notification on Sept 6.

With the stay order of the court, two to three months fee on account of summer vacations accumulated against the students. Now, with the disposal of the petitions the students have to pay the said arrears.

However, the bench has allowed private schools to recover arrears from students in easy installments equivalent to 25 per cent every month. The major issues among the schools and students are annual increase in tuition fee, siblings’ concession in fee and charging additional fee under different names, including annual, promotion or capitation fee.

One of the initial petitions was field by Peshawar District Bar Association challenging different provisions of PSRA Act and PSRA Regulations. The petitioner had requested the court to direct that the sibling concession should be 50 per cent and not the existing 20 per cent.

The petitioner had also challenged section 8 (2) (i) of the Act which allows up to 10 per cent annual increase in fee once a year with approval of the authority. The petitioner had requested that the permissible annual fee increase should not be more than 3 per cent.

The private schools had also challenged section 8 (2) h) which allows fee concession on kinship basis not less than 20 per cent of the fee. The schools claimed that this provision amounted to giving subsidy by the school to the students, which was not possible in existing situation, including the increase in their day-to-day expenses.

A legal expert said that PSRA was having limited powers in this regard as it had to remain in the ambit of PSRA Act and PSRA Regulations and it could not declare any provision of the law as unconstitutional.

Moreover, initially the PSRA was also empowered to order closure or sealing of a school in case of continuous violation of the law, but subsequently the said powers of the authority were abolished.

Experts believe that in the absence of those powers the PSRA is now a toothless body and it would be facing difficulty in implementation of any of its order against the private schools.

Earlier, the high court had on Nov 8, 2017, allowed three writ petitions filed by different petitioners, including Peshawar District Bar Association against private educational institutions, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government and regulatory authority on multiple grounds.

The court had issued several directives to PSRA for regulating the affairs of private educational institutions under the KP PSRA Act 2017. In that judgment the court had ruled as illegal the charging of transport fee from students during summer vacations. Similarly, the bench had also declared that the private schools should charge a maximum of 50 per cent of the tuition fee during vacations of more than 30 days. It had ruled that the annual fee increase under no circumstances be more than 3 per cent per annum.

However, the said judgment was challenged in the Supreme Court by Private School Network (PEN) along with other owners of schools. The apex court had on July 12, 2018, set aside the earlier judgment of the high court and had remanded the cases to the high court with the direction to pass a fresh order in accordance with law.

Now, in the present judgment the high court declined to give any direction to the schools or PSRA regarding any fee related issue.

“As regarding charging of fee (all types of fee i.e. annual charges/promotion fee and monthly fee) this court cannot give any direction in view of the regulations so notified as already held that the alternate remedy is available.”

The court observed that in the Regulations, regulation 7 had been introduced according to which regulatory authority shall establish fee regulation committee and the said committee shall devise criteria for categorisation of schools, maximum fee to be charged from students in each category and minimum remuneration payable to a teacher of the school.

A teacher of a private school said the authority should evolve criteria for remuneration of teachers as presently they had been exploited by private schools. She said that in most of the cases these schools were not even willing to pay salary equivalent to the minimum wage of Rs17,500 notified for unskilled workers.

Published in Dawn, October 7th, 2019