Steps under way to improve school infrastructure

Karachi
Karachi Commissioner Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui has said steps are being taken to improve the management of government schools to increase their resources and improve the standard of education.
He was speaking during a meeting of the steering committee of the Sindh Education Reform Programme (SERP) at his office on Saturday.
The programme aims to merge 3,479 different schools working in a single building into 680 schools.
Siddiqui said the target for the first phase of the programme had been to make 200 campuses till March 2015 but it was completed way ahead of schedule in October 2014.
In this regard he directed all deputy commissioners to visit the schools and review their performances.
World Bank representative Shafiq-ur-Rehman Paracha appreciated completion of the first phase of the programme before time and said that by the end of the year 1,000 more schools would have been merged into 200 campuses.
He said schools in Karachi will be presented as a model in other regions of Sindh which would then asked to follow suit.
The representative of Sindh education department said funds allocated for school management committees had been very helpful in fulfilling the immediate needs of schools and improving their infrastructures.
The meeting was told that the performances of merged schools were being scrutinised and 12 of them had been selected for the purpose.