Punjab education reforms praised

LAHORE: World renowned weekly ‘The Economist’ has highlighted the strong role of educational reforms espoused by the Punjab government under the leadership of Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, to improve access and quality of education, as well as to ensure that children from all segments of the society get educational opportunities through the Punjab Education Foundation (PEF).
A handout says the chief minister is committed to ensure 100 percent enrolment by 2018. For this purpose, it has been decided that all new schools will be opened through the PEF so that the targets can be achieved well in time.
The detailed story ‘Low-cost private schools learning unleashed’ takes full view of educational scenario in Pakistan, India, Mexico and Nigeria. In the news item, Shahbaz is termed “energetic” and a new standard-bearer for market-based educational reforms in Punjab where the government is helping private sector to expand.
It is worth noting that these educational reforms have been appreciated as a successful case study. As a flagship programme of the chief minister, the PEF has been doing a commendable job in ensuring equitable access to children from extremely poor households. They are provided opportunities to study in PEF-partner schools where they are financed by the foundation through various public-private partnership programmes.
The story mentions that the PEF is educating about two million needy children and the number will rise to 2.8 million by the year 2018. It is worthwhile that this is the second time that the PEF has been projected as a case study by this reputed international weekly.
The said story also included a brief interview of PEF Managing Director Dr Aneela Salman about how the foundation is changing the lives of needy children through education. While giving details of various educational programs, she said one free educational scheme helped the entrepreneurs to set up new schools particularly in rural areas so that needy children in such remote and far-flung areas could easily access it.
According to Aneela, through another programme, educational vouchers are issued to parents mostly living in slums to send children, who are not in schools, to the PEF-sponsored schools. She added that funding for all the students was provided under another PEF-sponsored free educational programme.
The PEF-partner schools cannot charge fees and must submit to monitoring and teachers’ training to ensure quality of education. Although the funding per pupil is less than half of what is spent by the government schools, results are at least as good, said Aneela.
While discussing the benefits of partnership with the private sector to promote education in the indigent segments of society, she maintained that private sector could be much more flexible about who it hired, and could set up schools quickly even in rented buildings and hire teachers from the local community.
The weekly noted that Punjab was also improving oversight and working out how to inform parents about standards. It has dispatched 1,000 education department officials equipped with tablets to conduct basic checks on whether schools are operating and staff and children are turning up.
In a joint study by the World Bank, Harvard University and Punjab government, parents in some villages are given report cards showing test scores of their children and the average for schools nearby, both public and private. As a result of this reform, participating villages had more children in school and their test scores in maths, English and Urdu were higher than in comparable villages where cards were not distributed.