UK government to pay stipend to 400,000 schoolgirls in K-P

The United Kingdom government has announced it will provide stipends to secondary 400,000 schoolgirls across Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

The stipends were announced in a press release from the UK Department for International Development. 

As part of the new programme of support the provincial government will introduce a pioneering system of electronic payments to provide stipends to help girls stay in school. Stipends will be made available to girls, for covering their cost of going to school. These payments will also serve as a financial incentive to increase enrollment.

George Turkington, the head of the Department for International Development (DFID) in Pakistan, said, “The UK has worked closely in partnership with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa over recent years to deliver strong results on education, and the provincial government’s commitment to introduce an innovative system of distributing stipends to girls is another big step in that direction."

Turkington said that investing in girls’ education is vital not only because it has a positive impact on their families, but also makes them more active members of the community by allowing them to earn a living.

The new mechanism of distributing stipends, which will initially be trialled in four districts, will bring an added degree of accountability and transparency to the programme by ensuring payments are more efficient and secure.

The UK Government has already helped a similar number of girls through the wider Khyber Pakhtunkhwa sector reform programme for education over the past year alone.

The provincial government will also focus on the capacity building and training of Parent Teacher Councils (PTC) with the support of the UK Government. Four thousand PTC’s will receive grants to allow them to take forward basic refurbishment and repairs of schools.

Repairing schools is a key priority since a number girls drop out after primary school due to a lack of facilities such as boundary walls and separate lavatories.

Welcoming the partnership, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Secretary Higher Education Farah Hamid Khan said, “The government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa immensely values the financial and technical support provided by UK’s Department for International Development to improve the state of education in this province. Children are our future and we are working very hard to provide all of them decent opportunities for quality education. The UK’s support in this regard is most appreciated.”