Fleecing community schools: Court seeks reply from Rawalpindi board
RAWALPINDI, Feb 1 Lahore High Court, Rawalpindi bench, here on Monday asked the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) to explain directions given to a community school.
Justice Asad Munir of the LHC sought the response from the BISE chairman to a petition of an organiser of the Baad Dopehr School, who said the board was demanding affiliation and inspection fees from him.
The judge asked the board chairman to respond through a responsible officer to the petition on Wednesday. The school is being run under the community participation project
Sajid Ilyas Bhatti advocate representing the petitioner - Syed Mazhar Ali Shah - made secretary education, executive district officer education, director community participation project (CPP) and chairman and secretary of BISE as respondents.
The petitioner managing evening classes in a higher secondary school in Attock maintained that the board had sent a letter to his school as well as other such schools and asked for the payment of endowment fund along with Rs95,000 as affiliation fee and Rs8,000 as inspection fee.
The petitioner, who has been given the contract to run the school for five years, said the Punjab government initiated the CPP in 2001 to enhance literacy through community participation and utilising the government schools' infrastructure in the evening. Students of these schools appearing in the examinations were being considered as regular students and the institutions accepted as government schools, he said.
Calling the demand of fees that were being charged from the private schools as unlawful and discriminatory, the petitioner prayed to the court to stop the board from collecting such fees.
The petitioner further stated that the board was not issuing admission forms to the class XI and XII students from community schools.