ON the morning of 15 October, the children of Al-Khair Education Centre in Dir Colony, Peshawar, had barely begun their first lesson when the roof collapsed. At least twenty-nine people died by most official counts, nearly all of them pupils under fourteen, along with a teacher. Police said 110 students were in the three classrooms beneath the collapse; the school enrolled around 1,200. The building was three storeys and officials have stated that the roof was carrying construction its structure could not bear. The owner was arrested and a committee of inquiry formed. The province has responded with an inspection order covering private schools across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. That is necessary. It is also familiar. Fourteen children died this year in tuition-centre collapses in Lahore’s Kahna and Baghbanpura. Each tragedy produces a drive. None has yet produced a system that finds the next dangerous roof before it falls.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa already has a regulator. The Private Schools Regulatory Authority was established under an Act of 2017 to register, regulate and supervise private schools and its remit includes building safety. Schools pay it an annual renewal fee of Rs10,000. The inquiry should establish Al-Khair’s registration status, what safety documentation was required and whether its premises were ever assessed. Conclusions about individual responsibility must follow evidence and due process. Parents are nevertheless entitled to ask what a renewal verifies about the buildings their children occupy and whether it ever reaches the roof. This points to the first reform. Permission to operate a school and continuing assurance that its premises are safe are different things and the current process treats them as one. A certificate issued when an institution opens cannot establish its condition five years later. Structures age. Owners add rooms and floors on slabs that were poured for a house. Oversight must follow the building throughout its use, with reassessment after alteration or damage.
Punjab has already acted. In July, the School Education Department directed that no private school or tuition centre be registered without a building fitness certificate from a civil engineer registered with the Pakistan Engineering Council. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa should adopt the same requirement and go further: certification before premises are approved for educational use, renewal at fixed intervals and fresh assessment after significant structural change. A school administrator can see a crack. Only an engineer can say what it means. The certificate itself also needs scrutiny. A signed document protects no one if the assessment behind it was superficial. The province should specify who may certify which structures, what an inspection must cover and what records must be kept and should independently re-examine a sample of certified buildings each year. A certification regime that is never audited becomes a fee for a signature.
An inspection must end in a decision that someone is responsible for implementing. Every assessment should specify one of four outcomes: continued use, repairs within a stated period, restricted access to particular areas or immediate evacuation. Reports should name who arranges repairs, the deadline and who verifies completion. The gap between “defects noted” and “defects corrected” is where children are currently sitting. Coordination matters because no single office owns a dangerous school building. The regulator holds the registration file; the district administration holds the power to seal premises; school management knows what was added when. Each district needs one designated mechanism that logs reported hazards, assigns action, tracks deadlines and escalates delays until resolution is verified.
Parents and teachers need an accessible route into that mechanism. They are the people most likely to notice leaks, falling plaster or a new floor going up and the people with the least power to act. A teacher who reports a problem risks her employment; a parent who complains risks the child’s place. A complaint channel should provide a reference number, a response deadline and a record of action and should protect the person who made the report. Transparency would make oversight useful to families. The date of the latest structural assessment, any restrictions in force and the status of required repairs should be displayed at the school entrance in plain language and published by the regulator. A parent choosing a school can currently learn its fee schedule and its board results. She cannot learn whether anyone has looked at the roof.
Enforcement must also recognize financial constraints. Many low-fee private schools operate in converted houses on thin margins and their owners cannot fund a structural retrofit from the next term’s fees. Targeted assistance and phased improvement plans should support eligible buildings where an engineer certifies that continued occupation is safe during repairs. A building found immediately dangerous must, however, be evacuated whoever owns it. Closure creates a second obligation: children still need somewhere to learn. District plans should identify, in advance, nearby schools with capacity, public buildings that can serve as temporary classrooms and double-shift arrangements where nothing else is available. The Al-Khair inquiry must establish the facts and determine responsibility through proper process. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has a regulator, a registration regime and a renewal fee. Whatever mechanism exists on paper did not connect the fee to the roof. Inspection drives should become periodic engineered certification; findings should become enforceable orders; and parents should see the results. Success means a parent can leave a child at the gate confident that someone qualified has checked the ceiling above her desk and that someone accountable will answer if it falls.
—The writer is Commoner from 44th Common Educationist — Founder of WHI Institute.based in Sargodha.