PESHAWAR: The Frontier government has prepared a strategy proposing innovative measures to ensure every child is attending school by 2015, an official said.
The plan has been worked out by the Education Sector Reforms Unit (ESRU), a think tank of the elementary and secondary education department, which offers some ‘out of the box’ solutions to enhance enrolment and prevent children’s leaving schools.
The NWFP has lower primary enrolment and higher dropout ratio in secondary education as compared to Punjab and Sindh, as according to official statistics around 2.8 million children are out of school at the moment.
The Frontier government is bound to ensure enrolment of every child in school as per the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals by 2015, and the target is unlikely to be met because there is a need of 22,000 new schools, which will require resources worth Rs5 trillion.
Apart from unprecedented resource mobilisation, construction of these schools will take at least 110 years because the implementing agencies with existing capacity can hardly build 200 schools a year.
The proposed strategy, however, gives an alternative plan that will reduce the cost at least 20 times, making it possible to enrol out-of-school children, Raja Saad Khan, programme director of ESRU and architect of the plan, told Dawn here on Thursday.
A summary, already approved by the provincial minister for elementary and secondary education, had been submitted to Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti, whose policy speech on April 10 last year soon after taking vote of confidence provided the basis for the strategy, he maintained.
The strategy recommends initiating second shifts in existing school buildings, which have no utility after official school timing. This step would save money and time to be consumed on construction of new schools, said the official.
Similarly, he said, the communities could be approached for provision of buildings for schools free of cost, while teachers could be provided by the government.
There were many areas where equal opportunity of schooling was not available for boys and girls, thus second shifts for girls in boys’ schools and vice versa, could be started to address this deficiency, he said.
Similarly, if buildings or sufficient rooms are available, second shifts of high school can be started in middle schools, and middle classes can be started in primary schools’ buildings in evening shifts.
The proposed strategy recommends that female teachers should be recruited in all future primary schools (boys and girls) and schooling up to primary should be co-education.
The official argued that this step would reduce the burden of establishing two schools in the same locality and it would also help counter dropouts usually caused by corporal punishment.
It is also suggested to gradually convert existing boys’ primary schools into co-education with the consent of community.
Construction of even a two-room school building involves an estimated cost of Rs3.2 billion, which can be saved if an approach of housing public sector schools in rented buildings is adopted.
Similarly, Saad said, the government had been advised to encourage the private sector to construct purpose-built buildings to be hired on rental basis by the government for housing schools, adding: ‘This will not only save money for the government, but will also attract investment in the education sector.’
To counter teachers’ absenteeism in remote areas, the strategy offers an innovative approach of hiring unemployed trained married couples, offering them teachers’ jobs in these hard areas with incentives.
The official explained that in areas like Kohistan there was no dearth of school buildings, but the main problem was availability of teachers because no one among the teachers wanted to be posted there.
However, under this approach, couples could be motivated to offer their services in these areas, he observed.
Another ‘out of the box’ approach of this strategy is offering employment to female students during their studies in backward districts.
It has been suggested that female students, when reach Class 8, should be given guaranteed jobs.
After matriculation, they should be admitted for training with reasonable monthly stipend in the Regional Institute for Teachers’ Education before they are posted in their respective areas.
Launching of campaigns for enhancing enrolment and steps for improving monitoring of teachers’ performance are also part of the proposed strategy.
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