UK education initiatives benefit 200k children

ISLAMABAD:

The United Kingdom's (UK's) collaboration with the Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) provincial governments helped over 200,000 children improve their access to schooling, basic reading, numeracy, and life skills, the British High Commission (BHC) said on Monday.

"UK collaboration with provincial governments has helped more than 200,000 children in Punjab and K-P improve their access to schooling, basic reading, numeracy, and life skills. Urdu reading levels rose from 15 per cent to 78 per cent, English reading from 15 per cent to 45 per cent, and subtraction skills from 37 per cent to 67 per cent," a statement from BHC said.

According to BHC, support through the UK-Pakistan partnership used learning-level assessments, targeted instruction, teacher coaching, and regular progress tracking to help children catch up. The programme reached over 500 public schools and enabled over 35,000 out-of-school children to return to education.

It said that the programme also "supported 48,000 learners through remedial education, strengthened teaching capacity through the training of more than 5,500 educators and 250 Master Trainers, and improved facilities in 400 schools."

Further, the statement revealed that, due to the initiatives, Urdu reading levels rose from 15% to 78%, while English reading levels rose from 15% to 45%, and subtraction skills rose from 37% to 67%.