The price of education

The strike call for private schools to remain closed across Punjab on March 8-9 has been at best patchily observed, with not all heeding the call from the All-Pakistan Private Schools Federation (APPSF) and the Pakistan Education Council (PEC) made on March 6. The call was made in response to the passage in Punjab of the Private Educational Institutions (Promotion and Regulation) Bill (Amended) 2015. The strike call may have been thinly adhered to but the protest is real enough. Private schools as their title suggests are supported by the fees paid by the parents of the children that attend. In terms of volume, the government remains the largest education provider nationally, but private schools of varying quality have grown like mushrooms across the land in the last 15 years. They are a response primarily by an expanding middle class with an increasing disposable income to the poor quality of education delivered by government schools, and there is no indication that growth in this sector is going to slacken.

Representatives of the APPSF and the PEC are saying that many private schools have been unable to revise — i.e., raise — the salaries of staff and teachers in the 2015-16 school year because of a government-imposed restriction on how much schools may raise their fees by and a proposed cap on fees of five per cent in the future. The APPSF and the PEC further allege that teachers are becoming demotivated and that a reduction in overheads is going to impact on the quality of service provided in the private schools. Some of this at least may be true, but there are also instances where private schools have made unannounced increases in fees that have surprised and dismayed parents, many of whom are on the borders of affordability when it comes to paying school fees. There have been cries that some schools are indulging in rank profiteering at the expense of students — a possibility that cannot be entirely discounted. The reality is that the nation needs private sector education now more than ever, because the state is and will in future fail to deliver educationally. Sort this mess out — fast.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 10^th, 2016.

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