KARACHI: The city’s private schools on Friday suffered a blow when the Sindh High Court threw out their petition challenging the law bonding them not to increase their fees more than five percent within an academic year.
Parents of a large number of children filled a petition challenging the arbitrary hike in fee.
A division bench headed by Justice Sajjad Ali Shah announced its verdict on a number of identical petitions filed by the parents and Generation’s School Private Limited and others.
Disposing of the petition, it directed the Sindh education department to ensure implementation of the laws, binding the private institutions not to hike their fees more than five percent within an academic year and further imposing to revise fee structure with prior approval of the government.
In the 16-page long verdict, the judges observed that the rift between the two sides is growing with every passing day because of failure of the education department to regulate private schools. At the same time failure of the state to impart education through public schools is also giving impetus to private individuals to fill this vacuum resulting in mushrooming of private schools, they noted.
While expressing displeasure the judges noted that the private schools are not following the mechanism for increasing fee, neither is their any compulsion on them by the education department to do so.
Advocate Jam Asif Mehmood, the counsel for the private schools, submitted that the cost of running a private school, hiring staff with high level of expertise, increased cost of utilities, and taxes forces private schools to increase their tuition fees. The schools also have to afford the higher costs of installing effective security apparatus. Moreover, he added, the government is coming up with enhanced wages and induction of students under free compulsory education laws into private schools which will add to their financial burden.
He argued that private schools ought to have autonomy in its administration and financial affairs including fixation of fee to enable them impart education at the highest standards since these institutions do not receive any aid from the government. He opined that fixation of fee by the government was unreasonable, which amounts to intruding into the private affairs of educational institutions.
Questioning the collection of exorbitant fees by private schools, the parents’ counsel Shajee Siddique submitted that the fee hike was illegal and unjustified as the law allowed the schools to increase only five per cent. However, he added, the schools have increased the fee more than 10 percent.
He said that his clients’ children were studying in different classes at different branches of the Generation’s School whose management had arbitrarily increased the tuition fees. The parents told the judges that they could not pay the excessive fees, after which the management of the school wrote letters, forcing them to clear their dues. On failing which coercive action would be taken against the children, they told the judges while pleading the court to restrain the school management from taking any adverse action that might jeopardize the career of their children.
The counsel argued that hike in fees was in violation of the Sindh Private Educational Institutions (Regulation and Control) ordinances of 2003 and 2015, under section 6 of the law, the fee structure must be fixed with prior approval of the government.