The Punjab Teachers’ Union (PTU) staged a protest rally on Thursday against government’s decision to hand over 5,500 educational institutions to the Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) and Danish Schools Authority.
Addressing the protesting teachers, PTU leaders said that the provincial government was not fixing the broken education system nor was it addressing the grievances of teachers.
They said if the government advanced with the proposed plan, it would adversely impact children studying at the public schools as they would have to pay a tuition fee set by private administrators.
They also said that privatisation would render thousands of teachers jobless.
The provincial government has already handed over around 60 schools in Rawalpindi to the PEF as part of the privatisation plan which the government claims will improve the standard of education.
A government official, requesting anonymity said, “Government will not hand over the land or the buildings of the selected schools to the private sector, but just their administration.”
