KP govt planning to enhance stipend for female students

Further incentives to promote education

PESHAWAR: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-led Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is planning to promote girls’ education through further incentives.

A senior education department official told The News that there is a proposal to enhance payment of stipend from Rs200 to Rs500 per month to every female student from class 6 to 10 as an incentive to continue studying instead of dropping out from school after qualifying class 5 from the primary school.

“We need to improve retention of female students after class 5 as many drop out. We want to offer them this incentive so that the girls join class 6 and continue studying up to class 10 and beyond,” the senior official added.

He pointed out that if given a stipend of Rs500 per month, the amount per annum to be paid to a female student from class 6 to 10 would come to Rs6,000. “I think it is a fairly decent amount for a poor and low-income family. This could serve as a proper incentive to admit their girls in middle and high schools after qualifying from the primary school,” he argued.

According to the education department official, the modalities are being worked out to move a summary to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister to enhance the stipend for female students and pay this amount from the current budget instead of the development budget. “The idea is to shift the payments for this initiative from the development to the current budget.

It comes under the non-salary head and there would be no need for preparing a PC-1 to make this happen. A summary to the chief minister would suffice,” he explained.The official also said the report of a proper survey undertaken by the education department would become available in September this year to provide figures about girls’ education in the province and other relevant data. “We think the survey would break certain myths,” he remarked without elaborating.

The PTI government has been taking credit for increasing the allocations for education and taking it to record level. It has also been claiming to have focused on girls’ education by building more schools for girls than boys. It also is presenting the decision to establish the Girls Cadet College in Mardan at a cost of Rs3 billion as one of its major achievements in the field of education.