Scores of private schools await registration

Meetings of DEA's registration committee are limited to mere formalities

RAWALPINDI:

The District Education Authority, Rawalpindi (DEA) has completely failed to regulate private schools and to make the registration system of private schools run in a smooth and hassle-free manner. As a result, all private school organisations have expressed complete distrust in the regulatory body.

Sources said the DEA could not register even a single school in 2022 whereas registration cases of 1,240 educational institutions are pending at its end. The meetings of the registration authority were only limited to formalities, the sources said.

According to sources, due to the non-issuance of registration certificates, hundreds of private schools were running without approval.

The number of registered private schools in the official documents is 2,500 while in practice 5,500 schools are functioning across the district. The number of government schools is 1,850.

Under the Schools Registration Act, the registration authority is bound to decide the matter pertaining to the registration of a private school within 60 days after receiving the application from the school owner. However, not even a single school could be registered even though many citizens who have put up applications for school registration have been pending for the last 10 to 15 months.

The deputy commissioner, who is the head of the committee, has reportedly not attended a single meeting for the last year owing to his busy schedule.

In his place, a female additional commissioner has been attending the committee’s meetings, but those are limited to refreshments only, due to which the private schools' registration system in the Rawalpindi district has reached the brink of collapse.

Although private schools are going to offer new admissions from February 1 most of them are still unregistered. In addition to this, the perks of online registration introduced by the regime of former Punjab chief minister Usman Buzdar have not yet reached the private schools.

All Pakistan Private Schools Management Association’s president of district Rawalpindi women wing and Member Board of Governors of the Education Board Sakina Taj and District President Abrar Ahmed Advocate said that the registration process was progressing well in more than 36 districts of Punjab.

“The school owners are taking full advantage of the online registration system, but in Rawalpindi district, the system has been made very difficult due to the incompetence of the registration authority,” they lamented.

“This is the reason why not even a single school could be registered last year,” they said.

Sakina demanded the commissioner and deputy commissioner of the Rawalpindi Division take immediate notice and action against those responsible for the inordinate delay.

The registration fee for a high school is Rs9,000, for a middle school is Rs6,000 while the fee for renewal of registration for the high school is Rs2,000 and for the middle school is Rs1,000.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, January 19^th, 2023.