Just as our declining economy has adversely affected other sectors, for the middle class, continuing their children’s education has become impossible. The prices of textbooks and stationery have been increased by 30 to 60 percent even before the start of new admissions. The administration or the education department has no mechanism to prevent this.
It should be remembered that the prices of school uniforms, shoes and stationery have also been increased on the other hand the admission fees have increased the difficulties of parents.
Therefore parents are struggling to buy food for their children, actually the increasing cost of education for children has made it difficult for them to live. Although textbooks are quite expensive, parents are forced to buy them so that they cannot focus on livelihood items and groceries. According to the book sellers there is no rush of parents in school uniform and textbook shops in the famous bookstores of Peshawar, including Chowk Yadgar, Hashtangri, Qisa Khwani, Peshawar Cantt, University Road, Hayatabad, Zaryab Colony, and Gulbahar area because of inflations and lack of jobs but the parents says that the booksellers have also started randomness and robbing the them with both hands.
At present the prices of plain copy, standard copy, normal registered, practical copies, large designing copy, pencil, marker, geometry books, ink, school uniform, shoes girls, boys, school uniform is very expensive in the general market beside that there is no check and balance on it by the relevant authorities.
The strange thing is that the sale of books does not come under the domain of the district administration, nor does the education department have any program, that how to its rates should be impose on book sellers.
This is the reason why different prices of these books and copies are fixed in different bazaars of Peshawar and the booksellers are charging random prices according to his will and the lifestyle of the area that have worried the parents.
In this regard most of the parents seem to be protesting and they demand that SOPs should be set between the education department, district administration and book sellers to set the prices of stationery of every quality.
On the other hand, private schools have met the rest of the people’s problems, where the admission fee per student has been increased many times while the overall costs of uniforms and books have also increased to an unbearable extent.
Meanwhile, these schools have also started the business of selling uniforms and books to the students and these are provided to the students at arbitrary rates, which needs to be banned so that the so-called educationists running these schools are exploiting the public.
The public will not be freed from this oppression until the business of big brands should banned. Meanwhile, in order to free the people from this oppression, it is necessary to improve the primary level quality of government educational institutions, so that people can get relief from heavy fees and they should be freed from the grip of private educational institutions.
It should be remembered that the middle class will remain in need of private educational institutions until the quality of government educational institutions would not improved. Now it has to be seen that the governments coming to power at the federal and provincial level take steps to solve other problems of the people as well as to provide quality education to the children of the poor.
The readers know that the political parties coming to power in the center and provinces have made many promises to the people to improve the quality of free education before the general elections, so now they have to fulfill their promises. Along with that, the bureaucracy should also play its part.
