Mrs. Nafeesa Imtiaz teaches at a private primary school in the Saidpur area off Multan Road in Lahore. She is in-charge of class four. She is a graduate, and has been teaching in the private sector for the past eight years. Her first job as a private schoolteacher earned her Rs6,600 a month. Later, she changed four schools for a better salary in about six years, and now she is drawing Rs12,900 monthly. She has to stay in the school from 8am to 2pm, six days a week for the meagre wage but, she says, she has no other option.

“Yes, I get peanuts for my hard work, but I have no other option,” she admits. “I have changed four jobs in six years, but to no avail. They all are very bad paymasters,” she adds.

Nafeesa, a mother of three, had to start a job to supplement her husband’s earnings, who is a salesman in a private company. She did her Intermediate and graduation as a private candidate, as her parents couldn’t afford her education expenses as a regular college student after her matriculation.

“I tried my best to get a government job, but couldn’t, as I don’t have the required academic qualification,” she says. “And now my economic conditions and my responsibilities as a mother and as a schoolteacher don’t allow me to secure a professional degree,” Nafeesa laments. She desperately wants employment in a public sector school, as there is a huge difference in wages in the two sectors, as well as job security and relatively better acceptance of a public sector female teacher in our society.

In our conservative society, people mostly believe that women should not work outside their home. That’s why women have very limited options as far as the choice of a profession is concerned. Teaching is among the few professions which are permitted to women by their families. The private schools know this fact well and hence exploit it.

According to a research study, conducted by the LEAPS project, private schools pay their teachers according to how much they could earn elsewhere. As a result, they pay women and local teachers considerably less. Females in government schools actually earn a little more than men (3 per cent), adds the study, while in private schools they earn up to 60-70 per cent less.

The study says that 76 per cent of private school teachers are female, compared to only 43 per cent in the government sector. And the teachers in private schools are a lot younger. The age distribution among private schoolteachers is highly concentrated around 21, while the age distribution of government school teachers is more dispersed with an average close to 40.

The study finds that employment opportunities for women are limited and because it is difficult for them to travel outside the locality or the village they live in, they have fewer opportunities and they are paid less in the private sector. Local teachers are actually paid less under both systems, but the difference is much larger in private schools – the penalty is 5 per cent in government institutions compared to about 50 per cent in private schools.

As most private schools’ administrators know that females cannot get good jobs due to the availability of fewer jobs for them as compared with those for men, they offer low salaries to women to exploit the situation.

Another major factor is that most of the females working in the private schools are not aware of their rights, like the actual salary, working hours, overtime payments, etc. And even if a few of them know about their rights, they do not fight for them due to fear of losing the job in the tight labour market.

An NGO, Human Rights Awareness (HRA), also released its report about the private sector teachers recently. The report notes that teachers working in private sector schools rank high amongst the most unappreciated and underpaid professionals in Pakistan, especially if they are women in rural areas.

The report revealed that over 70 per cent of female teachers earn Rs3,000 to Rs5,000 a month in small cities and towns, and they are not paid allowances at all. In urban areas, their counterparts earn double, but only five per cent make above Rs12,000 a month, adds the report.

A female teacher interviewed by the HRA in Haripur city said that she was getting only Rs3,500 a month but due to the scarcity of jobs she was compelled to work for that low salary. Another female teacher said she only made Rs3,800 per month without any allowance or facility. Private school owners may terminate teachers any time without fear of legal action, since they do not issue appointment letters.

It is a pity that most private school teachers are paid less than the minimum wage, fixed by the government at Rs25,000 per month, says Mrs. Nafeesa Imtiaz. There are many private schools even in the provincial capital, Lahore, which disregard the government-implemented minimum wage and exploit their teachers. Many schools charge their students full fees during summer vacation and do not pay even a single rupee to their teachers, regrets Mrs. Nafeesa.

Another schoolteacher, Afifa Ihsan, said that it happens every year that most of the students deposit their fees before summer vacation, but the school management pays only half the salaries to the teachers. She said that there were many graduate teachers who were paid less than Rs10,000 in private schools.

The Punjab Private Educational Institutions Regulatory Authority (PPEIRA) Act 2011 remained pending for years and it was passed as an ordinance in 2020. However, the regulatory authority has also failed to regulate the affairs of private sector education, especially the teachers’ wages issue, adds Mrs Nafeesa.