IHC told Islamabad schools denied scholarships worth Rs5bn

A hearing in the Islamabad High Court has brought renewed scrutiny to private education in the federal capital after the court was told that schools may be withholding scholarship benefits worth more than Rs5 billion a year. The issue surfaced during proceedings on school fee structures, where official material submitted to the court suggested that a legal quota meant to protect disadvantaged students is being widely ignored.

According to records presented during the case, Islamabad’s private education network includes 1,571 registered institutions spread across urban and rural zones of the capital territory. Together, these schools educate about 389,000 students. Under the law, each institution is required to reserve 10 per cent of its seats for children who qualify for free education, including students from low-income households and other vulnerable backgrounds.

Using the enrollment figures placed before the court, that requirement would translate into roughly 38,900 children studying without fees. Instead, the court was informed that most schools have not implemented the quota in a meaningful way. Based on prevailing tuition levels in the capital, the value of the unprovided scholarships has been estimated at between Rs5 billion and Rs6 billion every year, making the issue one of both legal compliance and major social consequence.

The regulatory authority overseeing private institutions, Peira, told the court that it had already begun collecting fresh data from schools for the 2025-26 academic session. It said institutions had been directed months ago to submit details of students admitted under the mandatory scholarship arrangement and that an internal monitoring mechanism had been set up to verify whether schools were complying in substance, not only on paper. The authority also indicated that punitive action could be considered against institutions that continue to default.

Even so, the case took an unexpected turn when the petitioner sought to withdraw the matter just as the scale of the alleged shortfall became part of the judicial record. That development has left many of the core questions unresolved. Without a final court order, there is no immediate adjudication on liability, no binding recovery direction and no definitive ruling on how the scholarship obligation must be enforced across the private school sector.

The issue is especially significant because the requirement is not a policy suggestion but a statutory obligation embedded in the Right to Free and Compulsory Education framework for the federal capital. The 10 per cent quota was designed to ensure that private schools share some responsibility in expanding access to education rather than functioning only as fee-based institutions. In practical terms, it was meant to create a bridge for capable but financially constrained students who might otherwise remain excluded.

The court disclosure also invites comparison with the government’s broader education push. Federal authorities have recently promoted campaigns aimed at bringing out-of-school children back into classrooms, including targets running into the tens of thousands. Yet the figures discussed in court suggest that strict enforcement of the scholarship law alone could immediately benefit a larger number of children than some publicly announced enrolment drives. That contrast has sharpened questions about whether Pakistan is underusing a legal tool it already has.

For families, the implications are direct and serious. When schools do not honor mandatory free seats, the burden shifts to households already struggling with inflation and rising education costs. For regulators, the case exposes the gap between rule-making and enforcement. For the education system as a whole, it risks deepening inequality by allowing high-quality schooling to remain concentrated among those who can afford ever-rising fees.

What happens next will depend on whether Peira follows through with transparent audits, school-by-school compliance checks and penalties for institutions that fail to meet the quota. The absence of a final judicial decree may have slowed immediate accountability, but the revelations placed before the Islamabad High Court have made the issue difficult to ignore. The coming weeks will show whether regulators convert the controversy into measurable enforcement or whether thousands of students remain shut out of benefits the law already promises them.