Budget 2017-18: K-P govt to allocate Rs138b for education

Amount 17% higher than that of budget 2016-17; Signs MoU with British Council for training 83,000 teachers

PESHAWAR: The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) government is planning to increase allocation for elementary and secondary education by 17 per cent to Rs138 billion in the upcoming provincial budget 2017-18.

“As the focus of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government is to upgrade the education system in K-P, it has more than doubled the education budget proposal from what the Awami National Party had allocated in the final year of its tenure in 2013,” K-P Elementary and Secondary Education Minister Muhammad Atif Khan told The Express Tribune on Sunday.

“The ANP government had allocated Rs61 billion for the education sector,” he said, adding that the PTI government has gradually but steadily increased the said budget over the years to Rs138 billion, reflecting a whopping surge of 126 per cent.



The minister said the PTI government had allocated Rs118 billion for the education sector in the budget 2016-17.

He said, “There was a dire need of teachers in the educational institutes in the province and the Provincial Services Commission’s process for hiring teachers was very slow so we had to introduce the National Teaching System (NTS).”

We hired around 40,000 teachers both for boys and girls’ schools through the NTS, he said.



“This year we will recruit 15,000 more teachers,” he said. “So far we have spent Rs800 million on training teachers, which is a record amount.”

He blamed the previous governments for hiring teachers on the basis of favouritism and nepotism, which did not bear any fruits.

The minister revealed that the current government first trained the existing teachers in all the districts and has now signed a memorandum of understanding with the British Council for training 83,000 teachers.



He said, “So far Rs121 billion has been spent for the provision of missing faculties in schools in the province and around 400,000 chairs worth Rs7 billion have been distributed to government schools.”

The previous government established 169 information technology (IT) labs in government schools, while the current government has so far set up 1,369 IT labs in both boys and girls’ schools in the province, he said.

When contacted ex-education minister and opposition leader of ANP, Sardar Babak criticised the current government saying that it has not yet constructed a single school.



“More schools will be required as the population is on the rise and so will be the number of children,” Babak said. “The current government has eliminated mosque schools [a teacher imparting education to poor students in mosques] started by the ANP government.”

PTI’s education minister denied the allegation, saying, “We have not finished the mosque schools system, instead have merged them with government schools.”

Babak said all the scholarship programmes like Stoori-De Pakhtunkhwa, Rokhana Pakhtunkhwa and others started by the ANP for poor students have been halted and the PTI government is doing nothing to revive them.



He said the PTI government has failed due to its wrong policies as the current setup has destroyed the education system under the banner of modern initiatives.