Authority set up to regulate private schools in Rawalpindi.

Byline: Aamir Yasin

RAWALPINDI -- The Punjab government has notified District Registration Authority (DRA) that will regulate private schools in Rawalpindi district.

Deputy Commissioner Saifullah Dogar will be the chairman of the authority, District Education Authority Chief Executive Officer Azam Kashif secretary, and Naeemul Hassan Awan and Irfan Muzaffar Kiani representatives of the parents and private schools, respectively.

The government issued the notification regarding the DRA on Oct 24 and the deputy commissioner's office received it on Saturday. Later, in the day a meeting of DRA was called and it started determination of fee of private schools as per directives of the Supreme Court.

A senior official of the District Education Authority told Dawn that the fee structure of 78 schools charging fee of over Rs4,000 had been revised. 'The formula was given by the Supreme Court. There is no increase in fee since 2017 and fee was frozen at the rates prevailing in January 2017,' he explained.

He said that in the registration authority, the schools submitted applications to increase their fee by more than five per cent as under the law, the registration authority will determine the fee from five per cent to eight per cent.

The official said that baseline of the fee was 2017 and all the 78 private schools, including Beacon House, Roots, Educators and others, had submitted their applications with the DRA, which allowed the fee increase and asked the schools to display the list on the notice boards for the information of parents.

He said that if any school or parents had objection in this regard they could submit the same before the District Education Authority (DEA), Rawalpindi, within a week. He said that the fee data was not collected by the district...