Number of out-of-school children decreasing: NCHD

Islamabad

Chairperson of the National Commission for Human Development Razina Alam Khan on Wednesday claimed a decrease in the number of out-of-school children in the country and praised stakeholders for contributions to it.

She was addressing the NCHD's senior managers during a meeting called here to review the working of the organisation. The NCHD chairperson said though not very high, reduction in the number of children, who were out of school, by two million was an encouraging happening. “We have to work harder and faster, especially in remote areas, to enhance the school enrollment of children as well as literacy rate,” she said.

Razina Alam Khan said last year, the NCHD enrolled 82,166 children of remote areas in its 5,949 'community feeder schools', where 6,581 teachers imparted multigrade teaching to 310,146 students.

She said feeder schools were established to give the underprivileged and marginalised communities in remote areas of the country the access to quality education. “When educational facilities are provided to communities on their doorstep, school enrollment rate will increase and dropout rate will decrease,” she said.

The NCHD chairperson said the people allowed their daughters, too, like sons to study in schools located in nearby areas. “Since 2010, we've mainstreamed 476,241 students in government schools,” she said.

Razina Alam Khan said to meet the targets of Vision 2025 and Sustainable Development Goals, efforts would be made to take literacy rate to 90 per cent and enrollment of children in schools 100 per cent.

“It’s a gigantic task and therefore, we all have to work together to do it with high vision, good planning and execution, and hard work,” she said. The NCHD chairperson said the overall progress on the Universal Primary Education programme in the country remained encouraging during the last three years.

“The number of school facilities like toilets have increased from 28 per cent to 33 per cent, while the number of out-of-school children has reduced to 24 million from 26 million. Also, advances have been made on many other fronts for enhancing education in the country demonstrating that national leadership and good policies make a difference,” she said.

Razina Alam Khan said in 2016, the planning and development reforms department conducted the third party evaluation of our education programmes and found them to be satisfactory proving the hard work of our staff members. “I would like to appreciate you all on good performance and request you to work with the same zeal and zest in the New Year, too,” she said.