SHC restrains private schools from collecting June, July fees in advance

The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Monday restrained the private schools from collecting advance fees of June and July fees collectively and directed them to issue tuition fee challans for each current month.

The court also directed parents to pay the tuition fee challans issued by the schools as per its order.

The high court was hearing a contempt of court application filed by parents against the non-implementation of the order that declared illegal increases in tuition fees by private educational institutions by over five percent from their last fee schedules.

Bushra Jabeen and other petitioners had filed the contempt application against private schools, the private schools director general and others for not implementing the court order. The counsel for the petitioners submitted that private schools were issuing tuition fee challans for June and July collectively in violation of the court order that tuition fees may not be received in advance.

The counsel of the private schools said that parents were not paying the tuition fees in the garb of calculations, and as a result schools were facing financial problems.

He said revised fee challans had been issued in compliance with court directions. He requested the court to direct the parents to pay the tuition fee. An SHC full bench, headed by Justice Aqeel Ahmed Abbasi, directed the private schools to issue tuition fee challans for only month of June and asked the parents to pay the tuition fee as per the revised challans issued under its directives.

The court directed the private schools’ administrations to not charge more than one month’s fee and recall the advance fee challans of July. The hearing was put off till May 20.

A full bench of the SHC had earlier declared that the provisions of Section 6 of the Sindh Private Educational Institution Ordinance and Rule 7(3) that restricted private educational institutions from increasing their fees by more than five percent did not suffer from any constitutional defect or legal infirmity and the same were intra vires to the constitution and the law.