PESHAWAR: A fourth-grade girl has moved the Peshawar High Court against her expulsion by a private school in Mardan district after allegedly subjecting her to severe corporal punishment and humiliation by a senior teacher there.

The petition filed on behalf of schoolgirl Ansa Khan by her mother, Seema Gul, requested the court to declare her expulsion by the Mardan Model School and College illegal and order her re-enrolment.

The petitioner said her daughter, an orphan, shouldn’tbe victimised.

She also requested the court to grant the girl the interim relief of re-enrolment in that school until the disposal of the petition.

Also complains about corporal punishment

The respondents in the petition are the principal of the Mardan Model School and College, its coordinator and senior teacher Sobia, provincial education secretary, and managing director of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Private Schools Regulatory Authority.

The petition filed through lawyer Salim Shah Hoti said the girl was enrolled in fourth gradeat the said school and her notebooks weren’t checked for several days, so her mother requested senior teacher Sobia first on Sept 17, 2021, and later on Sept 21 for the checking of the notebooks, but to no avail.

The petitioner said that the senior teacher got so infuriated over the requests that when her daughter went to the school on Sept 24, she was slapped, pulled by hair, and dragged across the floor, and was not even allowed to sit in the class.

She said that she visited the school next morning to complain about the incident, but the senior teacher, instead of repenting her act, began shouting at her, and misbehaved.

The petitioner said that the teacher pulled her daughter by hair and dragged her yet again.

She added that the teacher also called the principal and both of them misbehaved in front of staff members, both men and women.

The woman claimed that she had deposited her daughter’s tuition fee for the month of Sept but even then, the latter was verbally informed by the administration about her expulsion from the school.

She said that she and her daughter were driven out of the school by a guard and weren’t allowed to enter the campus afterwards.

The petitioner contended that corporal punishment had been banned by the government in educational institutions, but even then, the senior teacher and principal of the private school subjected her daughter to it.

She contended that getting education was the fundamental right of the people in line with the Constitution, so her daughter should not be deprived of that right.

Published in Dawn, October 5th, 2021