Ambitious: Province hopes to enrol 0.85m children this year

Education minister launches province-wide enrollment drive

PESHAWAR: In a bid to enhance enrollment in lower classes such as nursery, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Elementary and Secondary Education Department (K-P ESED) has launched an enrolment drive.

The drive, launched in all government-run schools of the province, aims to help the government meet its target of enrolling 850,000 kids this term. This is up from last year’s target of enrolling 800,000 children which the government missed by a mere 5,000.

The drive is expected to continue until April 30, 2018.

The department formally launched the drive at a ceremony at the Government Higher Secondary School Husnain Sharif Shaheed School in Peshawar. The ceremony was attended by K-P ESED Minister Atif Khan, MPA Shoukat Yusufzai, K-P ESED Special Secretary Arshad Khan and the department’s director Farid Khattak.

Atif reiterated that education was a key priority for the provincial government. In this regard, he pointed out that the government had introduced a number of reforms to improve the quality of teaching in schools and to enhance student learning outcomes.

“We have increased the education budget by more than 200 per cent, from Rs64 billion to Rs136 billion and have inducted more than 40,000 highly qualified teachers through the National Testing Service (NTS),” Atif said.

Moreover, he said that they had spent Rs29 billion on providing facilities in schools such as furniture for over 1.4 million children at a cost of Rs4 billion and establishing play areas in over 8,000 schools.

“We are also committed to providing modern IT resources to all high and higher secondary schools. 1,340 IT labs have already been set up and the schools have also been provided with 1,100 interactive whiteboards,” the education minister said.

He further remarked that education was their government’s mega project since only a good education system can help reduce poverty.

“We have spent Rs800 million on building capacity of teachers for better student learning outcomes. These trainings were focused on the latest global trends in education,” K-P ESED Special Secretary Arshad Khan remarked, adding, “We started an incentive programme for best-performing teachers which offered cash rewards and tablets to high-performing teachers all over the province and we ended up distributing 2,500 tablets worth Rs89 million and cash rewards of Rs165 million amongst school teachers across the province.”

Published in The Express Tribune, April 11^th, 2018.