PESHAWAR:Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Mahmood Khan and Provincial Education Minister Shahram Khan Tarakai on Friday inaugurated a mega project of provision of furniture to students of public sector schools across the province.
Talking to the media persons on the occasion Shahram Tarakai said with an estimated cost of Rs 6 billion, school furniture was being provided to 2.4 million male and female students across the province.
Provision of basic facilities to students was our aim that would be achieved under the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan.
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, now every student would have a chair to sit on, Shahram said, adding that in the first phase 1.2 million students would be provided new furniture with an estimated cost of Rs3 billion while in the second phase the same number of students would be provided furniture of Rs3 billion.
With this revolutionary step, he said the culture of students sitting on mats (taat) would be eliminated from the province.
The Education Department has achieved some notable feats during the last three years, as second shift classes have been started to accommodate and enroll out of schoolchildren.
In the first phase, he said the second shift classes have been started in 1200 schools of the province, accommodating nearly 3000 students. He said for the second phase 230 schools have been selected to start the second shift.
The KP Education Minister said, “we helped the students to get rid of heavy school bags by introducing the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa School Bag Act”.
Besides, he said following the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan, one million saplings were planted in 4000 schools under the Clean and Green Pakistan campaign.
To facilitate the students, the minister said Students Facilitation Centres were established at all the educational boards, which were providing all basic information to the students under one roof.
To streamline the affairs of transfers and postings in the Education Department, government has introduced an e-transfer policy under which all the transfers and postings were now taking place online and in a fair and transparent manner.
For the current year, he said a target of enrolling 0.8 million students was set, however we surpassed this figure by enrolling 965,000 students in government schools, which was a big achievement.
Regarding the transparency in examinations, the minister said CCTV monitoring systems were adopted at examination halls. “We provided SNC books from Grade-1 to Grade-5 students”, the minister said. He further said that in the second phase students from Grade-6 to 12 would be provided books.
Shahram said to provide recreational facilities to the students, KP Cricket League under-16 was introduced at schools in which 300 teams comprising 4000 students would take part in practice sessions. 585 matches would be played under the league in one month, he said.
The minister continued that they were going to introduce a Smart School Education Programme in public sector schools and MOUs with 87 institutions have been signed to materialize this objective. Under the Girls Community Schools Programme, he said 100,000 students have been enrolled in 3,500 schools. At these schools, he said 80 percent students were girls with 99 percent female teaching staff.
He said the Textbook Board has been completely digitalized while all the textbooks were also being digitalized to ensure its availability on websites adding that now everyone would be able to access a book online. To further improve quality of education, the School Leader Programme was also introduced under which 2500 school leaders would be appointed in Grade-16 while 190 would be inducted in Grade-17.
To appoint teaching staff through PTC, he said collection of data of the applicants has been started adding in first phase 700 teachers while in the second phase 1400 teachers would be inducted.
The Minister said that under Girls’ Stipend Programme, scholarships amounting to
Rs2.3 billion have been distributed among the girl students. The aim of the programme was to encourage female education and minimize the dropout trend. The intelligent students were being provided scholarships on merit.
Under “Stoori da Pakhtunkhwa” programme, position holder students of every educational board were being provided scholarship from Rs60,000 to Rs300,000. He said they were working on elimination of wrong postings in education sector and now every teacher would be posted on right position. A new department DPD has also been formed for the capacity building of the teaching staff.
The minister said that Rehmatul lil Alameen (Peace Be Upon Him) scholarship programme was being started at all public sector schools across the province; a new programme with the name of “Talent In A School” would also be started soon.