The approval of the Private Schools Regulatory Authority Bill 2017 by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa cabinet is welcome legislation. Under the Bill, a watchdog comprising members from concerned departments as well as representatives of private schools, parents and education experts will regulate private educational facilities within the ambit of law.
For years, parents across Pakistan have been complaining about the monopoly of an exploitative ‘private school mafia’ that is able to secure power in a country with a floundering public sector education system. Parents are thus demanding that the government look into the matter and put checks on the unfettered school administrators who revise fees in an ad-hoc manner and sneak in surprise expenses on top of tuition bill. The private schools’ representatives counter-claim that running schools is an expensive endeavour and they increase their fees as a response to new taxes and increasing utility bills, in the process using the parents’ argument of provision of superior education against them.
Though the authorities in KP have responded late as the bill was originally tabled in 2012, the time has now come for action. This crisis has above all revealed the dangers of turning education, a fundamental right, into a commodity beholden to market forces. With a limited supply but an ever-present demand — elite schools feel free to squeeze aspirant middle-class parents. When it comes to blame, both greedy school owners and the governments that have turned a blind eye to such practices share the burden equally. On a basic level, governments have repeatedly failed to provide a reasonable public alternative to private education. Millions of children nationwide are out of school since they either do not have access to nearby schools or that schools in their area are ‘ghost schools’. Where schools do exist, there are absentee teachers, an overall lack of funds and lack of inspection. This unfortunate gap is then filled in by private enterprises, who in the government’s second level of failure, are entirely without oversight. Though, in a belated bid to calm parents, the KP government has tabled the bill to appoint a watchdog for all private schools, the fatal flaw of the system remains unresolved. While this legislation is welcome and regulation of private schools’ affairs is the need of the hour and long overdue, at the same time, concerned authorities at provincial and federal level need to get their act together and make sure that both public and private education sectors are not shirking their responsibilities. *