ISLAMABAD: Education is among this government’s top priorities, said Mohyuddin Ahmad Wani, Secretary Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training, while speaking as the chief guest at the graduation ceremony of the 9th Cohort of Teach For Pakistan Fellows held the other day.
Speaking on the occasion he said ‘The Teach For Pakistan model inspired me to design a Tech Fellows Program in Gilgit Baltistan during my stint there before I took up my current assignment; I urge Pakistan’s development partners to help Teach For Pakistan expand its Fellowship program all over the country’?
The occasion also marked the completion of the Education Fellows project, a partnership between the Education Ministry, Teach For Pakistan, and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). Under this project, 87 teaching Fellows, the brightest graduates of top-tier universities, taught around 8000 students for two years in 47 public schools in underserved, rural areas on Islamabad’s outskirts.
‘The Educat
ion Fellows project has provided a blueprint for replication and scaling up the best practices in teacher recruitment, training, M and E, accountability, and coaching support for systemic change in education,’ said Khadija Bakhtiar, CEO of Teach For Pakistan.
On average, She said that Pakistani children lag 4-5 years behind their grade level. She said that during the two-year Fellowship, the Teach For Pakistan classrooms close as much as 4.4 years of the gap.
“Having taught almost 25000 students across 107 schools, Teach For Pakistan is expanding its program to under-resourced public schools in Sindh, beginning from Karachi in August”, she maintained.
Commending the government’s unwavering commitment to education under Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s stewardship, Education Team Lead, FCDO, Mazhar Siraj stated that the empirical evidence from the project is a testament to the fact that government schools in under-resourced communities can achieve excellent learning outcomes.
‘The Education Fellows project
aimed to inform Pakistan’s education reform program with data on teacher recruitment and training and assess the effectiveness of public-private partnerships in the sector; the encouraging outcomes would warrant expansion in such collaborations,’ he added.
The impressive graduation ceremony was attended by prominent educationists, development partners, senior diplomats, the graduating cohort, Teach For Pakistan students and parents concluded with a resounding renewal of the pledge to remain committed to the lifelong mission of ‘Quality Education for All.’