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| India-Pakistan |
| Early lessons in rights |
| 2015-04-17 |
| [DAWN] In recent days there have been a couple of observations by the Lahore High Court that raise hopes of some reform in the schools soon. Last Friday, the Lahore High Court asked the Punjab Textbook Board to decide within a month “about making fundamental rights of the citizens”… “an essential” part of the syllabus. Earlier this month, the court had called on the government to make laws to rationalise the school fees which have always been a subject of heated argument between parents and schools, with the government playing the role of the silent if sympathetic onlooker. The discussion on fees was taken a notch higher when in recent months the schools were required to tighten security around their premises in the wake of the Dec 16 terrorist attack in Peshawar. Both in public and inside the courts, the government had offered assurances that the additional costs would not be transferred to the parents. The parents believed they had already been paying school fees that were too high and ‘unaffordable’. Others agreed except the school administrations which chose to not take part in the fee discussion for the time being. Everyone, however, knew that they would use the old method of communicating their demands the next time they prepared the fee challans for students enrolled in their institutions. How could this go unmentioned and uncharged on the fee ledgers of schools known for making a neat profit on everything and anything that they made mandatory available to the students? There were eventually complaints from everywhere in the country about schools adding a few hundred rupees or more to the fee demand in the name of enhanced security. But if this was expected it did not pass as unnoticed and was not considered to be routine as the standard annual increase in the fees. The visibility and scale of the exercise to enhance security at the schools had provided a broader base for the debate about the schools’ tendency to ‘overcharge’ and got it some urgent attention. The call by the Lahore High Court in early April for laws to govern fees at privately run educational institutions has provided a kind of logical direction to the intensified discussion. Many would be hoping that it will lead to some kind of rationalising of the fee structure and will ease the pressure on parents living in perpetual fear of the clause in the school rule book that forewarns them of a regular increase in fees at the time of admission of the student. It is not so clear whether everyone would be as keen on following the more recent Lahore High Court direction about the inclusion of a reinforcement of the basic rights through the school syllabus. |
| Posted by:Fred |