he two education systems in the federal capital, both run by the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) have been in a tug-of-war over the administrative control of two schools.

There are two types of public institutes in Islamabad, federal government (FG) schools and colleges and model schools and colleges.

In May this year, FDE issued a notification for merging four junior model FG schools with model schools. According to Model Colleges Director Dr Tariq Masood, the schools were being merged in order to ease the admission burden on some overcrowded model colleges.

However, due to the idea being strongly opposed by FG teachers, the FDE had given up on the idea of merging two of the schools but went ahead with the merger of FG Junior Model G-6/4 with Islamabad Model College for Boys (IMCB) G-6and the merger of FG Junior Model F-6/3 with IMCG F-6.

The two junior model schools were offering co-education, which is not offered in the model setup.

The FDE administration then transferred IMCB teachers to FG Junior Model G-6, asking them to take administrative control of the school. The transfer was not welcomed by teachers of the FG system and tensions between both groups of teachers grew, affecting the education of over 500 students enrolled at the school.

Almost 25 FG teachers have been on strike for the last three days and academic activities have been almost suspended.

Meanwhile, classes are being held as usual in Junior Model F-6 by FG teachers.

`Officers of the model college setup misguided the state minister in order to get control of our schools as model schools produce the best results,` said FG School Teacher`s Association President Malik Ameer.

He said they were meeting with the minister for resolving the issue, `FG schools are given a Rs40 million budget while model colleges are given a budget of over Rs200 million and even then our results are better than theirs. Instead of handing over our schools to the model set up, the government should give both setups equal funds and facilities,` he said.