Education reforms to bring change

LAHORE
THE Punjab government has introduced far-reaching and sustained reforms in the school education sector; making it more competitive, efficient and result-oriented so that it could well-produce talented youth to ably deliver according to needs and requirements of the 21st century when ‘change’ is the only constant. It has also provided ample funds to materialise these reforms in a timely manner as well as recruiting new teachers purely on merit.
Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) Chairman Engineer Qamar-ul-Islam Raja stated this while delivering a key-note address on policy dialogue about free and compulsory education act, 2014 at a local hotel on Wednesday.
The roundtable was attended by different NGOs representatives who presented their points of view on different aspects of education sector in Punjab.
Qamar-ul-Islam, who is also the chairman of Punjab Assembly’s Standing Committee on Education, said that provincial government was fully committed to ensure hundred percent enrolment by 2018 so that Punjab could help accelerate national growth-rate through its educated workforce. Educational reforms will help our students to get quality education without being burdened. Punjab’s students will be able to explore new frontiers and avenues of opportunities in their practical life as education is the sustained foundation of every positive social change in human societies, he added.
He said Punjab Education Foundation was in the process of opening 1,500 plus new schools through private partners in 36 districts of the province during the current academic year alone. Out of it, 1,000 schools will be of elementary level, he said. Thus, thousands of deserving students will be able to enjoy free schooling in these PEF sponsored schools. This massive expansion plan will also promote girls’ education in different backward and remote areas where poor girls cannot go to afar schools on public transport due to many reasons. Currently, girls are about half of the 1.6 million students enrolled in our 4,000 partner schools. An educated girl is an asset who catalyses positive change in the society and our reforms will ensure better future for our girls, he maintained.
He said that a colossal sum of Rs28 billion were being spent by the school education department in current budget alone, and this shows that the Punjab government had granted sufficient funds for school education sector related interventions’ timely completion. This budget is being transparently used to improve the overall structure of the schooling system as budget-utilisation ratio in Punjab is very good.
It was 78 percent during the previous financial year, he pointed out. He expressed the satisfaction that teachers attendance ratio had reached 93 percent which was the best according to the world standards. The government has also introduced digital monitoring system to ensure efficiency and transparency in it.