Around two in every five private schools in Rawalpindi district are still not following the winter timings fixed by the Punjab School Education Department, even after repeated warnings from officials. The official schedule sets school opening at 8:45 in the morning and closing at 1:30 in the afternoon, yet many private schools continue to open as early as 7:30 and keep children until 2 pm, in clear disregard of the department’s notification.
The revised timings were brought in as winter approaches so that children are not made to travel and wait in the cold of the early morning. With the season changing, schools are already seeing more children fall ill with flu, colds, runny noses and persistent coughs, and the later start is meant to reduce that exposure at the coldest part of the day. For parents, the timing of the school day is therefore not a minor administrative detail but a daily question of their children’s health and safety on the way to school.
Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz has now taken notice of the violations and directed the department to make sure the revised schedule is followed in full. She has also ordered action against schools that refuse to comply, and department officials have confirmed that the next step will be the registration of FIRs against institutions that continue to ignore the official notification. Officials say that while around 60 per cent of schools are already following the new timings, a sizeable minority are still holding out, and parents have urged the authorities to ensure that the rules apply to every school without exception.
The warning leaves private school managements with little room to argue that they were unaware of the change, and the move towards FIRs signals that the department now regards the matter as one of enforcement rather than persuasion. If the crackdown is carried through consistently, the winter schedule should finally settle into a single pattern across the district, giving parents certainty about when their children start and finish school and removing the early-morning burden that the revised timings were designed to ease.
