Bright future: 70,000 new teachers to be inducted

Minister says teacher-student ratio will be revived to 1:29.

LAHORE:

450 new non formal education centres would be opened in Lahore, said Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman, provincial minister for education, on Thursday. He was talking to a student delegation.

He further said that the government is taking a number of initiatives to improve education standards in the province. He pointed out that 118,000 children have moved from private schools to government schools, which he said was a reflection of people’s confidence in government schools. He also said that a primary enrolment campaign has been launched by the government to increase enrollment while Rs6 million has been set aside for free education of students from low income households.  The minister claimed that government school enrollment had increased manifold after the PML-N government came to power n 2008.

The minister told the delegation that 70,000 new teachers would be recruited on merit this year. According to him, this will help improve the teacher-student ratio from 1:31 to 1:29.  The minister told the delegation that 50,000 new students would be awarded scholarships in the current year through the Punjab Education Endowment Fund. The minister said that if present pace of enrollment continued, Punjab would have a literacy rate of 88% by 2015.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 2^nd, 2012.