'Large number of unregistered private schools functioning'

"More than 7,000 private schools are functioning around the city today", Mansoob Siddiqui Executive District Officer, Private Schools informed this scribe, here on Monday. Regarding the number of unregistered schools functioning in the city, he said no details are available, as they do not have enough number of monitoring teams.
"We do have an inspection team which inspects the schools off and on but the problem is that it can only go for inspection at a specific place in a day. A mega city like Karachi needs more than one team to cover up the entire inspection within the required timeframe." As our team remains unable to complete its task within the timeframe, some schools take advantage of this and skip renewal of registration or keep running without registration. Nevertheless, whenever we detect such cases, we take legal action against them, he added.
The EDO revealed that many people visit his office to press for illegal admission in renowned schools, and even an ex minister's son came there for the admission of his children in Saint Joseph School and the ex-minister called to inquire about it. "'O' and 'A' level schools are influenced by big political names and they even filed a litigation many years back in the court against the registration of their schools. If the department tries to take any action, they have to face pressure, you know from where, he said while smiling mischievously. "We are trying our level best to do everything honestly and purely but as you yourself witnessed how much difficult it is', he added.
Apprising about the syllabus and curriculum designing, Mansoob said this basically comes under federal government's territory as all the publishers follow their bylaws. Any issue of expensive books can be clarified with them and the EDO office has no authority to ask them about it. Still, he continued we did raid many schools to check what basically they are teaching and took legal action as well. Citing an example, he said Dawood Public School was shutdown for teaching repugnant matter.