KARACHI: A significant number of students missed a school day on Monday because of the confusion that prevailed throughout the Sunday night and Monday morning as to whether to go or send children to school or not only because of the silence and failure of the Sindh government to come up with a timely public announcement.

There was also a confusion as to why the schools might be closed as on one hand there was a call for a country-wide shutter-down strike given by a political party due to rising fuel costs and skyrocketing prices and on the other the vice chairman of a private schools association was gunned down on Sunday evening.

As it is due to the shutter down strike, petrol pumps were also said to remain closed. And due to this the school vans and pickups were already unwilling to drive children to and fro.

Parents were already feeling the burden of dropping their kids to school and also picking them up on a day of a strike.

There was no official notification or announcement regarding the matter from the government till the small hours of Monday morning indicating that the schools were expected to remain open.

Uncertainty after TLP’s strike call coincides with murder of educationist

The education department made the announcement very late in the night between Sunday and Monday that no decision was taken to close the schools.

“There was too much uncertainty around what to do regarding sending children to school or not. The schools themselves seemed confused and were not giving a clear answer till late night. Things were not very clear in the morning as well so I decided to just keep them at home for a day,” one parent told Dawn.

All schools of the city are members of different private school associations.

It was evident that after the unfortunate incident of the murder of the vice chairman of the Federation of Private Schools, Khalid Raza, their schools were to remain shut in mourning. But were the other private school associations also with them in their grief, no one was sure about this.

Danish uz Zaman, chairman of the Private Schools Management Association, said that in support of the grieving private school association they kept all their schools closed.

“There were multiple things happening together so I guess parents got confused. But all our schools had informed parents by whatever means they usually use, be it through WhatsApp groups or SMS messages, that we were closing our schools beforehand,” he told Dawn.

“If anyone was still not very clear and brought kids to the schools, they were informed by our schools’ staff at the gate. There were also notices pasted at the schools’ gates,” he added.

Meanwhile, All Private Schools Management Association Sindh had said that all private schools under their umbrella were remained open.

Chairman of the association Syed Tariq Shah told Dawn that there was confusion that schools were closed due to the strike call because another private schools association in Lahore had decided to close their schools due to the strike.

As for the killing of the vice chairman of the Federation of Private Schools, he said that they offered Fateha and prayers in their schools for the departed soul. “We prayed for him with our students. But we felt it was important to keep our schools open so that the children’s schedule is not disturbed,” he added.

Published in Dawn, February 28th, 2023