LAHORE: The only school for transgender students in Lahore has been without stipend funding for 11 months, caught between two government departments that have not settled the terms of its handover, leaving students without support and teaching activity disrupted for close to a year.
Students at the school have not received their stipends for 11 months. The sole teacher posted there was transferred, which brought teaching to a halt.
The school was announced as being transferred from the Special Education Department (CED), to the Literacy Department. Despite the handover being made, funds were not released to the receiving department — leaving the institution formally reassigned but financially stranded.
Students have protested over the non-availability of funds and non-payment of stipends, demanding the immediate release of 11 months of outstanding payments and a resolution of the school’s administrative position.
The District Officer (Literacy) said the transfer of the teacher posted at the school has been reversed, and that classes will resume from Monday.
The DO said steps are being taken to resolve the school’s administrative matters, and that the School Education Department has given an assurance that funds will be released to the Literacy Department.
For most schools, a stipend is a supplement. For this one it is the mechanism.
Transgender students in Pakistan enter formal education at rates far below the general population, and the barrier is rarely curriculum. Many are estranged from their families in adolescence and support themselves; attending a class costs a day’s earnings before transport is counted. The stipend exists to close exactly that gap, which is why an 11-month suspension does not merely inconvenience students — it removes the reason attendance is financially possible.
The transfer of the single posted teacher compounds it. A one-teacher institution has no redundancy: when that post moves, the school stops.
The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018 places obligations on the state regarding access to education, and prohibits discrimination in educational institutions against transgender persons. Punjab has since run a small number of dedicated facilities intended to give students who have been excluded from mainstream schooling a route back into formal education.
Those facilities are few, which is what gives this case its weight. When a province operates a single institution of a given kind in its largest city, an administrative dispute over that institution is not a local inconvenience — it is a suspension of provision.
Nothing in this account involves a shortage of money or a policy reversal. The school was not closed, defunded by decision, or found deficient. It was moved between two departments, and the budget line did not move with it.
Handovers of this kind are routine in provincial administration, and normally include a settled transfer of funds alongside the transfer of responsibility. What appears to have happened here is that the reassignment was announced and executed while the financial arrangement remained unresolved, with the cost falling on the students for close to a year.
Two things are now testable. Classes are said to resume on Monday, which is verifiable within days. And the School Education Department’s assurance on releasing funds carries no stated date — whether the 11 months of arrears are paid, and when, is the measure that matters to the students who are owed them.
The Lahore Times has sought comment from the School Education Department and the Literacy and Non-Formal Basic Education Department on the release timeline and the arrears.
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