Education dept brings donors together to avoid duplication

Thematic core groups are being created for spheres of educational reforms.

KARACHI: Given that so many major donor agencies are working with the Sindh government on education, there was bound to be an overlap. For example, there has been so much focus on primary schools that the province now has 49,000 of them. But high schools have been ignored. There are only 2,300 of them.

Thus, in a bid to streamline the efforts being made by international development partners, the Sindh education and literacy department called a meeting on Tuesday after which it was decided that thematic core groups would be created for different areas of educational reforms.

This was the first meeting of the new Sindh Educational Development Partners Coordination Forum (SEDPC) which includes the European Union, World Bank, Unicef, Unesco, Japan International Cooperation Agency, Canadian International Development Agency and World Food Programme.

“The forum will be instrumental in implementing reforms ambitiously,” said Education Secretary Siddique Memon. The department has nine major donors. “However, those who provide money come with their own ideas and wish to place grants only in specific areas,” he added.

As a result, the department had been seeing a duplication of proposals and ideas, he said. “There was a need to bridge the gap between our donor planning and the goals and objectives of the department.”

The forum will help the development partners share information. “This will remove the overlap and our partners will be able to find new domains to focus on,” he said. “Right now we need to focus on middle and high schools.”

Memon told the delegates that in last three years the development budget of education sector has increased to Rs7.7 billion and the department has completed 92 schemes and 28 schemes are expected to be completed by June this year.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 15^th, 2012.