LAHORE: Ignoring the appeal of the education minister, private schools in Punjab on Monday stuck to their decision to close the institutions for Tuesday and Wednesday (today and tomorrow) to press the provincial government to withdraw `controversial` legislation -the Punjab Private Educational Institutions (Promotion and Regulation Amendment) Bill 2015.

The private schools, however, will `informally` remain open for matriculation, O and A level students.

`The schools will formally be closed but the students of matricu-lation, O and A will come for preparation of their exams,` a private schools representative said.

Some private schools sent letters to parents explaining the two-day closure and sought their support against the new law.

On the other hand, Punjab EducationMinisterRanaMashhood Ahmed held a meeting with the representatives of private schools and tried to persuade them to call off the strike. But they refused to budge from their stance.

`The minister has constituted a committee to resolve the matter within a week but we told him to give us assurance to withdraw the controversial bill which is aimed at strangulating and not regulating the private schools,` said Kamran Malik of the Pakistan Education Council (PEC) that represents the chains of elite schools in the province.

Talking to Dawn, he said the pri-vate schools would not let anyone to buy time to fail the strike.

`Five per cent annual raise in fee is not our only problem. We simply want the government to sit with us and resolve the matter,` he said.

The PEC and the All-Pakistan Private Schools Federation (APPSF) have jointly announced closure of the private schools (on Tuesday and Wednesday) against what they called a `draconian new law`.

Under the new legislation, the private schools cannot increase fee more than five per cent annually and that too with the approval of government representatives.

APPSF President Kashif Mirza said the penalties laid down in the bill were unjust and would be detrimental to education in the province.

`The bill will destroy the private school education sector. The govern-ment is not fulfilling its duty of providing education to the masses and now it is trying to destroy the private sector as well,` he said.

`We will go to court against the bill as it put disgrace towards educational institutions and a restriction on raising fees. Schools will only be allowed to raise fees by 5pc annually. Schools, especially smaller institutions, cannot survive with such restrictions. The inflation rate is 15 to 20pc. Only 5pc fee raise is unjustified,` Mirza argued.

The private schools said the initial closure may soon lead to an indefinite shutdown of all private schools in Punjab. `We deeply regret the impact that this will have on the children but this difficult decision has been taken because our schools can no longer afford to sustain their operations,` they said in a statement.