Summer vacations: Students are not forced to attend summer camps, says schools secy

Secretary says schools cannot hold classes without parents’ consent.

LAHORE:

The schools secretary told the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Thursday students were not forced to attend summer camps.

He was responding to a petition against summer camps for students in grades five to 10 in Nankana Sahib schools.

The secretary said summer camps were arranged with the consent of parents. Action would be taken against any schools holding summer camps without taking parents on board, he said.

Justice Ali Baqar Najfi asked the petitioner’s counsel to file his response to the secretary’s statement.

On Wednesday, the judge had directed the secretary to record his statement.

Two teachers and as many citizens from Nankana Sahib have filed the petition.

They said the secretary had issued a notification on May 30, 2012, declaring summer vacations in schools across the province from June 1, 2012 to August 19, 2012.

They said he later issued another notification on May 30, 2012, asking schools to arrange summer camps for grades 5, 8, 9 and 10 from 7am to 10:30am.

They said attending classes during the hot weather was a hardship for students. They said load shedding had aggravated the problems.

They said students and parents had been demanding that the authorities close the summer camps.

“Electricity and water are not available to 50 per cent of schools in the district.”

The petition maintained that continuing classes under the circumstances was not possible.

The petitioners said only a few students were attending the special classes. Several, they said, had reported sunstroke.

They said Zeeshan, a grade 9 student at the Government Guru Nanak High School, had died from a sunstroke. “The report of this death has triggered panic among students and their parents.”

The petitioners said the mobility allowance of the teachers had been also been withheld. They said teachers should be paid the allowance if the government insisted on holding summer classes.

They requested the court to declare the summer camps notification illegal.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 13^th, 2014.