In preparation for 2016: Three education bills to be introduced

School education to be made compulsory for children of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa

PESHAWAR:

The provincial government is planning to introduce three bills that will make it compulsory for every child to attend school and regularise private educational institutions.

One of the bills will also regulate the hiring process of government school teachers who will be recruited in the same area as that of their residence. This was stated in a handout issued on Sunday by the K-P government.

A meeting was held at the department of education and was attended by high-ranking officials.

Minister for Elementary and Secondary Education Muhammad Atif Khan, Special Assistant to the Chief Minister for Higher Education Mushtaq Ahmed Ghani and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan and Chief Minister Pervez Khattak co-chaired the meeting.



The moot was also attended by secretaries of the concerned departments and a team of Department for International Development (DFID), UK, which was represented by its Islamabad-based head.

The bigwigs at the meeting also decided the universities model act, currently being considered by the vice chancellors, will be implemented by March 2016 to effectively administer activities of public sector universities in the province.

The newly established Women’s University in Mardan will also become operational starting March 2016 and provide quality higher education to women from across the province.

While highlighting the party’s commitment to develop the education sector, Imran Khan emphasised the need to improve the standard of higher studies in the province.

“The provincial government must take immediate and necessary steps to make college-level educational institutions fully autonomous,” the handout quoted him as saying. He said since colleges are feeding universities, the standard of education in the colleges must also be raised and college administrations, including the principals, should also be made answerable. Imran urged the K-P government officials to excel at their job and do what “the other two parties, who had been in power for six times,” could not do.

Meanwhile, CM Pervez Khattak thanked DFID for helping improve the education sector in the province and said the provincial government is providing all financial support required. The government is “spending about 29% of its development budget to improve the state of education and have not taken a single penny in loans for this purpose,” he added.

There will be no primary schools with less than six rooms and at least as many teachers, Khattak said. He added teachers are available round the clock for their students and the government will hire teachers from the same area the schools are located in to eliminate absenteeism.

He also asked for the acceleration of ongoing work on Chitral University and ordered the provision of a transport facility for teaching staff of government colleges within the current month.

Sahibzada Muhammad Saeed, head of the Strategic Support Unit of the Chief Minister’s Secretariat, said the law department had vetted the draft legislation to make school education compulsory for all children in K-P and it would be implemented by June 2016.

He said a draft of the universities model act had been sent to the VCs for their input and its implementation was planned by March 2016. He further stated that merit would be established for school-based recruitment of teachers and postings/transfers will be checked. Meanwhile, the availability of teachers would be ensured through another proposed law which had been sent to the law department for vetting and would be implemented by April 2016.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 7^th,  2015.