WITH the recent amendment in the Punjab Private Educational Institutions Act, the provincial government has brought home-based tuition centres, which are mainly run by young women, under the definition of ‘private institute’, bringing them into the tax net. This regressive taxation to the vulnerable lower-middle-class women must be viewed critically.

This debate over registering home tuition centres highlights a strife between state regulation and the socioeconomic realities of Pakistan. While the state argues that registration provides legitimacy and institutional oversight for these academies, it is a financial burden on these coaching centres, and an economic injustice. The state cannot sustainably increase its revenue by burdening the economically weaker segments of society.

First, this policy impacts small-scale, home-based tuition centres that cannot be compared to large commercial private institutes. Second, these tax and compliance costs would eventually be passed on to students in the form of rising fee, further blocking access to education for margina- lised students.

Regulating tuition centres is a positive step. However, registering the centres must not be paired with financial strain, but with grants, access to better educational materials, and digital training for these centres. The government must establish a fiscal benchmark below which micro-tuition centres should be fully exempted from taxation and registration fee.

Furthermore, the registration process should be online and simplified. The state must incentivise and protect these micro- pillars of its economy instead of treating them as tools to bridge its fiscal deficit.

Momina Akbar
Lahore

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2026