PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court reserved its judgment for today (Thursday) on nine petitions about different categories of fee in private schools, including fee concession for siblings, summer vacation fee, and annual fee increase.

A bench consisting of Chief Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth and Justice Mohammad Naeem Anwar heard for around five hours the arguments of scores of lawyers for students, private schools, government and KP Private Schools Regulatory Authority (PSRA).

One of the major petitions was filed by the Peshawar District Bar Association against different aspects of fee structures in private schools and certain provisions of the KPPSRA Act, 2017, including permission of 10 percent annual increase in school fee, collection of the annual fee and other fees other than tuition one, and that of summer vacation fee despite a stay order issued by the high court.

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

Petitioners had taken private schools to court over different categories of fee

The schools challenged a circular issued by the PSRA on May 30, 2019, asking them not to charge the summer and winter vacation fee until further orders.

Some schools also challenged the sealing of their premises by the PSRA over the issuance of fee challans.

The high court had issued a stay order on July 3 in favour of students and stopped private schools from charging any sort of fee from students until next date.

Lawyers Abbas Khan Sangeen, Zahidullah Zahid, Nazish Muzzafar, Sanaullah, Iftikhar Hussain and others appeared for PDBA and parents, while Sattar Khan, Ayesha Hamid, Shehzad A Elahi, Barrister Babar Shehzad Imran and Fida Gul defended different schools.

Additional advocate general Qaiser Ali Shah appeared for the KP government.

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

Abbas Khan said some schools had been asking students to stay out of classrooms in the scorching heat.

He said as several lawmakers owned private schools, they got enacted a law lenient to private educational institutions.

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

They said through the said law, the schools had been allowed to increase fee annually by 10 per cent, which was an unjust provision.

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

They added that the schools charged students fee as annual fee and promotion fee and under other heads.

The counsel criticised the government for replacing the previous PSRA MD, Asad Haroon, claiming the step was taken under pressure from private schools as the former MD had issued different circulars in support of students.

They said after the replacement of the former MD, around a dozen circulars issued earlier were withdrawn.

Barrister Asadul Mulk represented the PSRA and defended the withdrawal of the circulars saying the same were issued by the previous MD without any legal backing.

He said the PSRA had been strictly following the law and had constituted fee structure committee under the PSRA Regulation.

Sattar Khan, lawyer for some schools, said on the order of the previous managing director of PSRA, different school premises were sealed.

He said last year, amendments were made to the PSRA Act.

The lawyer said the power of sealing premises was taken away from the MD, so he had overstepped his mandate under the law.

Lawyer for Education Services Ayesha Hamid said Section 8(2)(h) of the PSRA Act, 2019, which provided for at least 20 percent concession to siblings except the first one in same school, was in conflict with the Constitution.

She said that concession was a sort of the subsiding of education for private schools.

The lawyer wondered how such a condition could be imposed on private schools, which were already struggling to meet expenses.

About waiving off of summer fee, she said it was not possible for schools to expel their teachers during summer vacation and employ them again after vacation.

Shahzad Elahi said such provision of fee concession to siblings was not available in any other province except KP, which proved discrimination on part of law makers in this province.

Published in Dawn, September 26th, 2019