Private school owners oppose educational institutions closure

PESHAWAR: National Education Council (NEC), body of the private school owners, has rejected to the decision to close down schools and asked the government to provide education cards to the parents of the students studying in private schools like those of health cards.

Speaking at a news conference at Peshawar Press Club on Thursday, the NEC Chairman Nazar Hussain said that the decision of closing schools was an anti-education measure.

Flanked by other office-bearers, he said all the trade centres, bazaars, banks, judicial system, etc were open without any Standard Operating Procedures and there was no justification to close down schools.

Quoting health experts as saying that children were more secure in educational institutions than those outside the schools, Nazar Hussain said the constant closure of schools had badly affected children’s education and that was why people have been terming the sitting government as anti-education.

He said the government should review, what he termed, the anti-people and anti-education decisions.

Nazar Hussain said the coronavirus pandemic had already destroyed the education sector and the government also did not pay any bailout package, due to which five to six thousand small schools had closed.

He said it was the constitutional duty of the government to provide free education to people, urging the government to provide education cards to the underprivileged like that of health cards.

The private schools body chief said the government should also provide six months rent to those schools functioning in rented buildings so as to save small schools from closure.

He said the government should also treat private schools as its own institutions for the better future of the children.