PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Tuesday directed all private schools of the province not to harass or act against students, who didn’t deposit summer vacation fee in a lump sum.

A bench consisting of Justice Syed Afsar Shah and Justice Ikramullah Khan issued the order during the hearing into a petition filed by the Peshawar District Bar Association against different aspects of the fee structure existing in private schools.

The petition was decided in favour of the petitioner and several parents by the high court last year.

However, the Supreme Court recently set aside that judgment and remanded the petition to the high court for decision in line with the law dealing with private schools in the province.

Seeks govt, regulator’s comments on petition against fee structure

The bench fixed Sept 11 for the next hearing asking the KP Private Schools Regulatory Authority, provincial government through education secretary and the Private Schools Association to file their respective comments about the petition before it.

A panel of lawyers for the petitioner, including Zahidullah Zahid, Abbas Khan Sangeen, Sanaullah, Taimoor Shah, Syed Bilal Jan and others, appeared before the bench and contended that the high court had allowed private schools last year to charge students half tuition fee during summer vacation.

They also said after the Supreme Court’s judgment, the private schools had been pressuring students to pay fee for last several months in a lump sum.

The lawyers said the students were being subjected to both physical and mental torture by their schools over summer fee, an act, which was punishable for being unlawful.

They alleged that some schools had locked down students in classrooms in suffocating weather and didn’t allow them to leave the premises unless their parents deposited the sought-after fee.

Sattar Khan, lawyer for private schools, denied the claims and insisted that the schools had been receiving fee in accordance with the law.

He requested bench to give him some time to formally respond to the petition.

On Nov 8, 2017, the high court had accepted three petitions filed by different petitioners, including Peshawar District Bar Association, against the private educational institutions, provincial government and the regulatory authority on multiple grounds.

The court had issued several directives to the PSRA for regulating the affairs of private educational institutions under the KP Private Schools Regulatory Authority Act, 2017.

The PSRA approved fee regulations for schools on Feb 19 and asked private schools to comply with them. The regulations said the schools won’t charge more than half of the tuition fee from second or third children of the same parent.

The PSRA had also directed the schools to charge only the maximum of 50 per cent of the tuition fee during the vacation of more than 30 days and said students won’t be charged transport fee during vacation.

The same bench had also ruled in the last judgment that increase in tuition fee won’t be more than three percent annually.

However, the law said the PSRA would sanction annual increase in fee not in excess of up to 10 per cent to be charged from the students, but not more than once in an academic year.

The bench in its detailed order also directed all relevant departments and local government authorities to cooperate with the PSRA and ruled that the PSRA could file contempt petition with the court against uncooperative educational institutions.

The directions had prompted the PSRA to withdraw its earlier regulation.

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2018