Many private schools to open from today

LAHORE: Following the LHC Rawalpindi bench decision, all private schools in the city have announced that they would reopen and resume classes on August 27 (today), Private Schools Owners’ Association told The Express Tribune.

All Pakistan Private Schools’ Owners’ Association president Mirza Kashif told The Express Tribune that two regional association presidents, Malik Ibrar of Islamabad and Muhammad Ashraf of Rawalpindi district, had filed a petition before LHC’s Rawalpindi bench last week. He said that on August 26 the LHC had allowed the private schools to reopen and resume classes. He said that the LHC had struck down Punjab government’s notification about the schedule of vacations.

According to the notification, summer vacations that started from June 1 were to end on September 9. He said that the private schools had announced their holidays from June 15 to August 15 but the Punjab government forced them to follow the vacations schedule which it had issued for the public schools.

Schools secretary Muhammad Aslam Kamboh told The Express Tribune that the Punjab government would make its stance known after reading the court judgment.

Despite government’s notification about summer holidays, some private schools resumed their classes from August 15, said Mirza Kashif. He said that all the private schools wanted to resume their classes simultaneously.

Kashif claimed that students must attend school at least 220 days in a year but in Pakistan the students attended school only about 125 days in a year, which was insufficient to cover the syllabi.

“We have been asked to attend school without our school uniform” said Arslan Khan, a student of Class 8 at one of the private schools situated at Wahdat Road.

He said that he had been attending school in casual dress for the last week.

Now, he said, he had received a call from his class in charge to attend the school wearing school uniform from August 27 (today).

Published in The Express Tribune, August 27^th, 2010.