Schools management: Schools will be allowed to make spending decisions

Experts say the initiative should not affect provision of funds to schools

LAHORE:

Public schools in the province will be allowed to spend their non-salary  budget in accordance with their needs from this year, Qamar ul Islam Raja. chairman of the Punjab Assembly Standing Committee on Education and the Punjab Education Foundation (PEF), told The Express Tribune on Monday.

He said the decision was taken in view of the performance of some schools given financial autonomy last year. He said the responsibility to identify areas for utilisation of development budget would rest with the School Management Committees. He said because of their intimate knowledge of the community served by the school, the management committees were better equipped to do the job. The committees are headed by headmasters and comprised school teachers and representatives of students’ parents and the community.

He said the schools could use the funds to recruit more teachers if needed.

Some educationists The Tribune spoke to said the initiative could improve schools’ management if the government kept providing development funds to schools.

Baela Reza Jamil, Idara Taleem-o-Agahi director programmes, said financial autonomy for school managements should be welcomed. However, she said the government shouldn’t consider itself absolved from the responsibility of providing funds to the schools just because schools would be autonomous (to make their financial decisions).

Raja said the government had no plans of cutting development spending. He said development budget for schools had been doubled from Rs7 billion in 2013-14 to Rs14 billion in 2015-16.

Another measure he mentioned for improvement of schools’ management was establishment of education authorities at district level. He said the authorities would start functioning after local government elections in the province.

Raja said the ban on recruitment of teachers had been lifted last year. He said 140,000 teachers had been hired through the Punjab Public Service Commission since the removal of the ban. He said the provision of missing facilities at public schools remained a priority of the government. He added that the passage of the Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board Act also help improve education standards at public schools.

Raja said the PEF had been formed in 1991 to promote public-private partnership in management of public schools. He said till 2001 the foundation’s mandate had been limited to extending loans to entrepreneurs who took over the management of public schools. Since 2001, he said the foundation had been covering tuition fees of children coming from income-poor families and helping private entrepreneurs set up schools in remote areas.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 1^st, 2015.