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LAHORE: The federal government is all set to introduce a law making it mandatory for private schools and educational institutions to register with it (the government), government officials said. The proposed legislation, which was prepared after lengthy consultations and consensus with various stakeholders and existing laws for the registering private schools and educational institutions, was forwarded to the federal cabinet for final approval, officials added.

The legislation would be brought before the National Assembly as soon as it got a nod from the cabinet, they said, adding that however if the cabinet meeting or the assembly session got delayed due to any reason, a presidential ordinance might also be brought to enforce the registration and regulation of private schools and educational institutions.

Officials said registration would be ensured and data would be collected through a census for detailed future guidelines and policies. The policy to deal with private schools would not be on the pattern of the registration of religious seminaries, officials said, adding that the government would just collect data on private schools, as it was being gathered in the case of the seminaries, but both policies would be different.

Initially, the legislation would be enacted to cater to the federal area, as Islamabad did not have any law to register and regulate private schools and educational institutions, officials said. Nobody knew the number or type of private schools were being run in the federal area jurisdiction, officials said, adding that there were only rough ideas and estimates, but no solid official data on such schools.

The provinces already have laws to register private schools.

Legalisation would be introduced according to modern needs and issues and would be adopted by the provinces as part of a national policy, officials said. Currently, Balochistan had the oldest law to register private schools, which was introduced in 1962, they added. Such legislation was introduced in the Punjab in 1985 and was later amended in 1995, officials said. Sindh also adopted a law to register private schools in 2001 and amended it in 2004 while the NWFP approved a law to register private schools and educational institutions in 2002, officials added.

The proposed legalisation included measures to ensure the quality and standard of private schools and to grade them according to the amount and quality of facilities they provided, officials said. Confusions being created in the legalisation were baseless, as documents had been prepared with mutual consensus and after taking into account the suggestions of various stakeholders, officials added.

There would be no section in the legislation regarding the fee, officials said, adding that however the legislation proposed the salary of teachers and necessary staff not being lower than that being drawn by government teachers and staff working in public sector schools on equivalent grades or status. Officials said it would be compulsory for private schools to hire teaching staff on terms, conditions and modalities equal to those being offered to teaching staff on contractual appointments in public sector schools.

Officials said the government believed in public-private partnership and the legislation would be a step towards realising that. They said that independent experts and senior teachers would comprise the inspection committee or team that would register the private schools and educational institutions.

Officials said there should be no apprehension about the bill, as it would encourage good schools to open more branches and expand and would pressure schools of low standard to improve their overall structure and quality. They said the census for collecting data of private schools would start immediately after Ramzan and would be completed by April 2006.

The Punjab government has been working towards bringing a new legislation for the regulation of private sector schools, but work has been slow and no significant progress has been made till now.

Source: South Asia Media Net More