Back to school: Second phase of enrolment drive to commence in fall

Door-to-door awareness campaign to kick off as early as August

PESHAWAR: The second phase of the school enrolment campaign in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa will begin in September. However, the government and its partners decided to launch a door-to-door awareness campaign as early as August.

The K-P government with the help of supporting organisations including UNICEF, Save the Children and Alif Ailaan had launched a province wide school enrolment campaign on April 8 hoping to place 0.8 million children in schools. However, according to the All Primary Teachers Association (APTA) provincial president, the target was not met due to a lack of interest on the part of government’s education department.

A success for the govt

Talking to The Express Tribune, K-P Elementary and Secondary Education Director Rafiq Khattak said the first phase of the campaign was successfully completed with 0.4 million out-of-school children enrolled across the province.

“The second phase will start from Peshawar where an enrolment hub will be set up in Government Hassnain Shaheed High School and district campaigns will be run via school teachers,” he said.

Khattak added the main focus of this campaign was to get children from the rural districts like Hangu, Shangla, Kohistan and Torghar to enrol since the dropout rate in those areas was very high.

Unmet targets

“The government failed to reach its target in the previous phase but we want to ensure that does not happen again. The focus should be on poor parents who do not send their children to school at all and the government should train teachers in this regard for this campaign,” suggested Regional Coordinator Alif Ailaan Umar Orakzai.

APTA President Malik Khalid Khan told The Express Tribune, a majority of the children who drop out come from extremely low-income families where they are forced to become earning members of the household. “The parents do not realise that by not sending their children to schools, they are destroying their children’s future forever,” he added.

He blamed the government for the high percentage of school dropouts, saying, “Schools lack basic facilities including the employment of qualified teachers despite a huge amount of spending by the education sector. The government had assured us of the appointment of 10,000 new teachers but has failed to fulfil this promise yet.”

Published in The Express Tribune, July 27^th, 2015.