PESHAWAR: Once crippled by the inefficiencies of its bosses and alleged irregularities at the lower level, the Elementary and Secondary Education Foundation (ESEF) has emerged vigorously and started setting precedents of effective working and transparency for other departments.
In order to ensure transparency, smooth and fair payments to stakeholders and establish school-based information systems, the foundation successfully digitized all its functioning with the technical support of Hope 87, an international non-governmental organization and the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education Peshawar.
The digitization process was announced in March this year and formal implementation of the system was commenced in September last and within the shortest span of time, the entire process has been completed, which has started bearing tremendous results.
This is the first system in the entire country among all the institutions of formal and non-formal education where everything is online.
Attendance of teachers and students are registered online. The complete profile of the teachers and students enrolled in the informal girl’s community schools is available online.
Details pertaining to the entire data and functioning of the two major schemes for out of school children run by the foundation have been made available online.
Interestingly, no such budget has been allocated for the digitization of the schemes. On the other hand, the provincial government has allocated a huge amount of Rs1 billion for providing tablets and other gadgets to schools for the digitization of the educational institution.
The elementary and secondary education foundation is meant for the promotion of education among out of school children in the province in a non-formal way.
For this purpose two major schemes - Iqra Farogh-e-Taleem Voture Scheme (IFTVS) and Girls Community Schools (GCS) hwere launched several years ago.
Ideally both the schemes were very valuable. But due to a host of reasons they failed to produce desired results. However, the current management of the foundation took some drastic measures to not only put the schemes on the right track but also ensure transparency, fair play and efficiency in all its functioning.
The GCS is one of the prime schemes of foundation. Under the schemes, informal community schools are set up in areas where children, particularly girls of low earning families have no access to educational institutions.
Woman teachers are arranged for the teachers and some 70 per cent enrolled in these schools are girls.
Currently, some 1982 schools are functioning under the projects across the province. At least 299 new schools have been set up against the target of 500 till June 2023 taking the total number of community schools to 2281.
The 1447 schools under federal government’s projects - Basic Education Community Schools (BECS) and National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) - are also being handed over to the foundation and these schools would be run as an Annual Development Plan (ADP) scheme.
As many as 1265 of these schools have been digitized. The data of some 88719 students including 56129 girls and 32590 boys have been placed on the digital admission withdrawal register.
Complete profiles of these students are available online with pictures, parents details, form-B, school leaving certificates and others. Online attendance of teachers and students is taken and properly checked every day.
Some 2636 teachers have been engaged for the community schools. Some 2575 of them have been registered on the digital app with their complete profiles.
These teachers have started uploading online attendance of their own as well as their students. Before the formal launch of digitization, all the teachers were properly trained to use the software through their mobile phones.
The honoraria of the teachers have also been increased and their outstanding payments which had been withheld for three years have also been released to them.
For this purpose funds amounting to Rs444 million were released to the schools. Earlier, a female teacher was to be engaged at a monthly honorarium varying from Rs7000 to Rs15,000. The current management of the foundation increased the honoraria to at least Rs21,000 for all the teachers.
With the increase in the honorarium now highly qualified teachers are applying for the community schools. The teachers engaged for the newly established 299 community school are at least graduates.
One important aspect of digitization is that a tracking and tracing system has been introduced for students.
Earlier, girls passing out of these schools would remain untraceable. Now, arrangements would be made for their admissions in higher classes. These students have also been declared eligible for the scholarship schemes like those of formal educational institutions.
A quality assurance cell has also been introduced in digitization. Now tests would be given to students online and those showing the best results would be invited to an annual function and they as well as their teachers would be given cash prizes.