PESHAWAR, June 29: The Peshawar Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education will soon form a committee to fix tuition fees of the capital city’s private schools.

According to PBISE chairman Professor Mohammad Shafi, the committee comprising senior educationists and representatives of the board and private schools will first categorise educational institutions in light of their infrastructure and facilities and then fix their tuition fees.

During a meeting of the administration of PBISE, owners of local private schools, union leaders, parents and educationists, the chair, Professor Shafi, regretted that private schools fixed tuition fees on their own, and called for a uniform fee structure for these educational institutions.

Participants accepted the suggestion, prompting the PBISE chairman to announce that a committee consisting of senior educationists and representatives of the board and private schools would soon be formed to place educational institutions in three categories on the basis of their infrastructure and facilities, and then fix their tuition fees.

Cheating in examinations also came up for discussion during the meeting.

The FBISE administration and parents urged private schools to discourage cheating in examinations for the better future of the children.

Professor Shafi said he desired that no money should be collected from students during board examinations for food of invigilators.

Participants said cheating in examinations destroyed personality of students.

They said once students successfully used unfair means in examinations, they didn’t take interest in studies.

According to them, cheating in examinations will produce incompetent people harming national interests.

Representatives of private schools blamed FBISE for cheating in examinations, saying most superintendents in examination halls force the administrations of private educational institutions into bribe.

Professor Shafi, however, denied the charge and said he had disqualified 150 invigilation staff in the Secondary School Certificate Examinations for the same.

He urged people to immediately inform him about invigilators making illegal demands.

The board chairman said renewal/extension in provisionally recognition for the session 2012-13 would not be accorded to the institutions not implementing the Peshawar High Court decision about 50 per cent concession to the real brothers/sisters studying in private educational institutions.

The representatives of the private schools demanded abolition of the rules under which students with less than 14 years age couldn’t appear in the board examination.

“There is no age limit in the world for students appearing in the any examination,” a representative of private school said, adding that the age limit had deprived many students of the chance of appearing in board examinations.

Professor Shafi told the representatives of private schools to implement decision of the provincial government regarding introducing Pashto as compulsory subject from class 1st to 6th from the academic year 2012-13 in the Pashto speaking areas.