Education is a fundamental human right, but it is also an expensive one. Currently, private schools serve more than 40 per cent of the country’s school-going students. In 2016-17, more than 15.5 million children were enrolled in private schools, according to the National Education Management Information System. According to Article 25-A of the Constitution, it is the state’s job to provide free and compulsory education to all children, something it is failing to do, given that there are 22 million out-of-school in Pakistan. Merely 3 per cent of those who enroll actually complete their education. There is no excuse for these numbers given that the education budget doubled from $3.5 billion in 2010-11 to $7.5 billion in 2016-17.
On January 17, 2019, the Supreme Court ordered all private schools in Pakistan charging over Rs 5,000 a month to reduce their fees by 20 per cent, to return 50 per cent of the fee charged over the summer, and to thereafter raise fees by only 5 to 8 per cent year-on-year. It also cautioned private schools against cutting back on facilities, increasing class size or reducing teachers’ salaries to compensate for these cuts.
But it is difficult, when suddenly forced to operate on four-fifths of your budget, to not make compromises somewhere. Unless something changes, some trims are inevitable.
In most cases, the reason for fee hikes is rising costs, not greed. Forcing all schools to reduce their incomes by a fifth needs to come with a playbook for how to deal with rent increases of 10 per cent or more annually, not to mention salary increments and the inflated costs of general maintenance, technology, utilities, professional development, and classroom resources. Our school currently operate out of three buildings, the rent of one of these went up by 65 per cent last year. How are we supposed to keep our schools running on slashed fees when the price of virtually everything around us is increasing?
The taxes applicable to private businesses are also applicable to private schools. Schools rarely receive amenity plots and are granted no subsidies by government
It is crucial to point out here that taxes applicable to private businesses are also applicable to private schools. Private schools rarely receive amenity plots and are granted no subsidies by government.
Private schools fill the gap left by the state’s failure to provide a basic constitutional right. They come under constant flak for not delivering on quality, but every private school that I have been affiliated with or visited far outweighs the quality of virtually any government school in the country. In the absence of any financial assistance or relief from the state, their fee raises are more often than not an effort to meet their costs without sacrificing on quality.
The assumption that each and every private school is making an exorbitant profit is flawed. Private education is not a monolith: it encompasses schools across a wide range of price points and profit margins. The blanket 20 per cent reduction will hit some fatally, leaving them either without any profits, or sending them into crippling debt.
At a time when the economy is in a shambles, the government simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to start solving the education crisis. The Supreme Court order only applies to schools that charge over Rs 5,000, giving parents who are already relatively affluent a bargain, and providing no relief whatsoever to families who are actually struggling to put food on the table. In so doing, the state is ostracising private schools instead of leveraging them towards a national cause.
Public-private partnerships, if thought through, can make quality education available at lower costs for affluent parents while also making it accessible to students from low-income backgrounds. But the National Education Policy Framework, published in November 2018, completely fails to propose how private schools can be woven into solving the education crisis.
There are countless options for private schools to be subjected to price regulation in ways that actually improve education access; for example, schools could be allowed greater fee increases if they take on more students for free. This is a win-win situation; it allows private schools to meet their costs while also giving students from low-income backgrounds a chance to receive a quality education their parents could never otherwise afford.
No problem is too big to solve, but we have a tendency in this country to reject research and reason, and create more problems instead of fixing the ones at hand. Schools are fuelled by the vision of people who run them; they are living philosophies that are always evolving. We live in a rapidly changing world that refuses to slow down. If we are to raise our children to inherit this world, we need to stay on our feet.
The writer is a freelance contributor