Punjab misses school enrolment target

Big districts fail to benefit from admission drive

LAHORE:

Despite the Parho Punjab, Barho Punjab enrolment campaign, the provincial school education department has missed the children’s admission target for the ongoing academic year by around 640,000.

As per official data, the Punjab School Education Department failed to achieve the target of 11.65 million students’ admission to government schools during the year.

The schools across the province enrolled 11,002,518 students and the figure is 644,098 less than the target announced by the department under the Parho Punjab, Barho Punjab Campaign.

The data shows that the enrolment target was only achieved in three districts, whereas 33 other districts, including Lahore, fell short.

The department operates about 50,000 government schools across the province.

It launched the school admission campaign in March and set target of 11,646,616 admissions this year for all districts.

The chief executive officers of all district education authorities were given the deadline of May 15 to fulfill the target of admissions. However, the target was missed in most of the districts.

According to a document, only the Bahawalpur, Rajanpur and Sahiwal districts achieved the assigned targets.

Districts Chakwal, Gujrat, Sialkot, Sargodha, Mandi Bahauddin, Toba Tek Singh, Faisalabad, Jhelum and Lahore showed the worst performance in new admissions this year.

“We have been disappointed especially by the performance of big districts, including Lahore, Kasur, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Multan and Chakwal,” a senior official of the school education department told The Express Tribune.

He said about 39,000 fewer students than the target were admitted to government schools in Lahore.

“We had given a target of 636,957 admissions to the CEO in Lahore but 597,055 children were enrolled. Similarly, the target was missed by 65,000 in Faisalabad, 24,465 in Rawalpindi and 28,881 in Gujrat, 37,490 in Sargodha, 25,362 in Rahim Yar Khan, 24,465 in Rawalpindi 32,483 in Sialkot,” he added.

He said the department was planning to take action against the CEOs of the 33 district education authorities that had not met the target of admissions.

The officials responsible would also face inquiries regarding their poor performance, he added.

A leader of the Punjab Teachers Union, Rana Liaqat Ali, said the lower number of school admissions was alarming but the campaign might have been affected because thousands of teachers were engaged in census duties across Punjab.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, May 24^th, 2023.