The Education is right of every child and the state is responsible to ensure the quality education to all and sundry. In the case of Pakistan, education became a highly competitive business which deprived middle class and lower middle class parents of the opportunity to send their kids to good private school. As a matter of fact, public schools are not in good condition across the country due to misgovernance and lack of resources. Therefore, parents generally prefer to send their children to private schools.

On Friday, Supreme Court of Pakistan has struck down an increase in the fee by private schools.

A three-judge Supreme Court bench struck down any increase in private schools’ fee since 2017 in its verdict on appeals pertaining to exorbitant hikes by private institutions.

In a 65-page verdict, the court said that private schools had “excessively increased fee since 2017 in violation of the law” and that the charges should be restored to what they were in January 2017 and the additional amount be “struck down”.

The verdict said that any increase in school fees the allowed limit is 5 per cent per year must be in accordance with the laws and that any recalculation be made “using the fee prevailing in 2017 as the base fee”. The recalculation method, the top court said, must be supervised by regulators and the amount charged must be “approved by them and shall be treated as the chargeable fee”.

The verdict also forbade the schools to recover “under any circumstances” arrears for fees reduced in accordance with the Supreme Court’s 2018 interim ruling on the matter. In the interim order, the Supreme Court had ordered a 20pc ad hoc reduction in fees charged by private schools charging more than Rs5, 000 per month to provide some immediate relief to parents.

“The regulators shall closely monitor the fee being charged by private schools to ensure strict compliance with the law and the rules/regulations. Complaint cells shall be set up to deal with complaints arising out of increase in fee in violation of the law/rules/regulations,” the verdict read.

Incumbent government must be made accountable for not upgrading public schools. Education has not been the first priority of the successive governments in all four provinces of the country. The increasing number of school dropouts and less budget for higher education indicated a lack of seriousness of PPP and PML-N to upgrade public sector education in the country.

The Fees case highlights the slow disposal of public interest cases. An interim order of the case was passed on December 30, 2018 where the apex court ordered a 20 per cent cut in the fee structures of those educational institutions which were charging fees in excess of Rs5,000 per month. Initially, schools complied with the verdict. Once the files gathered dust, the schools recovered the charges waived in the wake of the interim order. The detailed judgment of an interim order should ideally be issued soon for clarity. The good thing about the detailed judgment, however, is that it orders the recovery and adjustment of the overcharged fee since 2017 in accordance with provisions of laws of Punjab and Sindh.

The verdict noted that the private educational services industry was a business. It is better for school owners to follow business ethics.

However, it is yet to be seen how does the government practically implements its policy and incumbent government promised to reform education system of Pakistan. Recently, in a move to reduce social injustice and provide every citizen with equal opportunity the federal government has announced to introduce ‘national’ curriculum for all the institutes including seminaries.