PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Wednesday extended a stay order until Sept 24 against the collection of summer vacation fee by private schools across the province.

Chief Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth and Justice Naeem Anwar adjourned hearing into eight petitions about fee and other issues of private schools after asking all parties to produce the relevant records.

The petitioners, including the Peshawar District Bar Association, several parents have sought the court’s orders for the regulation of fee of private schools, while the schools have taken the KP Private Schools Regulatory Authority to the court over the May 30, 2019, circular, which restricted the collection of summer and winter vacation fee.

Asks all parties to produce relevant records

Some schools have also challenged the sealing of their premises by the PSRA after the issuance of fee challans to students.

The high court had issued a stay order on July 3 temporarily stopping private schools from charging any sort of fee from students until next hearing.

The PDBA has challenged different aspects of fee structure in private schools, including monthly fee, sibling concession, summer vacation fee and annual fee increase.

The petition was earlier decided in favour of the petitioner and several parents by the high court in 2017, but last year the Supreme Court of Pakistan had set aside the said judgment and had remanded the petition to the high court for deciding it in accordance with the existing law dealing with private schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Abbas Khan Sangeen, Zahidullah Zahid, Nazish Muzzafar, Sanaullah, Iftikhar Hussain and other lawyers represented the PDBA and parents, while Sattar Khan, Khushdil Khan and others appeared for private schools.

The counsel for parents said private schools had been using different tactics to pressure students and their parents to receive summer vacation fee.

They said students were harassed to pay that fee.

Abbas Khan said some schools had driven students out of classrooms in the scorching heat over the fee issue.

The lawyers said certain provisions of the KPPSRA Act were in conflict with the constitutional provisions guaranteeing the right to education as they favoured private schools.

They said the law allowing schools 10 per cent annual fee increase was unjust.

The lawyers said instead of giving 50 per cent concession in fee for siblings enrolled in the same schools, the Act mentioned only 20 per cent concession.

They added that schools charged fee under the heads of annual fee, promotion fee and others.

The counsel for schools requested the court to fix those cases before any other bench saying the chief justice has already given a decision about it in cases filed earlier.

The bench, however, rejected the request observing that the cases would be heard on Sept 24 by a bench headed by the chief justice.

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2019