Private education: Schools asked to let CCP examine accounts

LAHORE:

The newly-formed Private Schools Parents Association (PPSA) has urged private school owners to let the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) investigate their accounts for recent years.

A statement released on Friday in response to a recent newspaper advertisement carried by the All Pakistan Private Schools Federation and Partners said that the federation had brought forth no evidence in support of its claims. It said the advertisement was an attempt at misleading the public.

Further, the PPSA asked private schools to make public details of the facilities provided by them. It said that for several years schools had been raising tuition fees by claiming that they were providing state-of-the-art facilities to the students.

Rejecting the APPSFP claim that fee hike at most schools had been between 10 and 13 per cent, it said that in the previous year alone most private schools had raised their fees by 17 to 20 per cent.

It said that over the last five years most schools had raised tuition fees by up to 200 per cent.

The PPSA statement said it was unfair on the part of the private school owners to justify high tuition fees by comparing those to tuition fees at leading universities in United States and Europe.

It said school education could not be compared with university education.

The statement criticised schools for charging parents for provision of security measures at the schools. It said the amount charged was not justified in view of the poor state of security arrangements at most schools.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 3^rd, 2015.