Access to education: Free and compulsory education law in March

The government is working on a plan of action to be announced along with the education policy, says minister.

LAHORE:

The provincial government will present a bill on education reforms in line with the Article 25-A of the Constitution – which gives every child between the age of five and 16 the right to free and compulsory education – in March 2014, Education Minister Rana Mashood Ahmad Khan told The Express Tribune on Wednesday.

Khan said the government was working on a plan of action to be announced along with the education policy.

He said the proposed reforms included regulation and monitoring of private schools in the province and developing a monitoring mechanism to ensure quality education at all schools in the Punjab.

“We are working on a comprehensive legislation on education reforms instead of taking up piecemeal law-making,” he said.



Khan said the Article 25-A legislation involved several areas of a child's development and cross-departmental input was required to look at the issue in a holistic way.

“There is no intention to delay the legislative process… it is just a complex issue being dealt with seriously.” The education minister said the government was already following the provisions of Article 25-A “in letter and spirit.”

He said the Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) and the Punjab Educational Endowment Fund (PEEF) had been set up to this end.

The PEEF has provided nearly 41,000 scholarships since its inception in 2009. The PEF, established in 2004, is now operational in all 36 districts of the Punjab and has over 3,000 partner schools.

Khan said the recent enrollment campaign was another attempt to address the issue of access to free education. “Ensuring that all children of school going age are enrolled is the first step towards implementing Article 25-A,” he said.



The government had targeted to enroll almost 2.5 million out-of-school children in the 5 to 9 age bracket in the province through this campaign.

Work on enabling legislation in line with Article 25-A was initiated through the Punjab Education Commission Punjab in August 2012. A draft handed over to the government is yet to be introduced in the provincial assembly.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 26^th, 2013.