Hold your ground

Lawmakers must not yield to impractical demands of interest groups on the School Education Bill.

Various stakeholders and interest groups have again intensified their lobbying to include provisions favourable for them in the School Education Bill—even though it had already been endorsed by the respective thematic committee of the House of Representatives. The House committee passed the bill and forwarded it to the plenary of the lower house last month, nearly two years after it was registered in the legislature. But various interest groups such as the school owners’ organisations—PABSON, N-PABSON, and HISSAN—and the teachers’ federation have for long been mounting pressure, through protests and lobbying.