Vocational training for deserving 10th class students

LAHORE: The Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) plans to introduce free-of-charge vocational training for deserving grade 10 students in its 2,000 partner schools across 29 districts of the province.

The training will enable these students to get jobs after their matriculation examinations, a PEF press release stated.

Raja Muhammad Anwar, the PEF chairman, on Saturday presided over a meeting of 30 partner non-governmental organisations (NGOs) at the PEF committee room.

These NGOs are working with the PEF to train the teachers at the partner schools. The meeting reviewed the training programme launched by the PEF to enhance the quality of education at schools in low-income areas where teachers are mostly underpaid and less-qualified.

The PEF chairman said that the teachers were being taught about the importance of human rights, child psychology and how to deal with children with disabilities.

He said that teachers were being discouraged from using corporal punishments.

The PEF, he said, has already trained 90,000 private school teachers.

He said that the PEF had a database of the 800,000 students of its Foundation Assistance Schools and was now planning to computerise teachers’ data as well.

Raja Muhammad Anwar said that computerisation of data will help the PEF better coordinate with its partner NGOs.

The PEF chairman urged the participants of the meeting to promote universally accepted human rights and child rights principles throughout the partner schools.

Anwar also  said that the Punjab Education Foundation was determined to make education accessible to the poor.

The meeting was attended by Tanveer Ahmad Zaffar, the deputy managing director (Operations) and project officers Sadia Zia, Munazza Zameer, Ali Khan and Mariam Shakir.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 10^th, 2010.