‘PEF helps needy kids study free of cost’

LAHORE
Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) Managing Director PEF Dr Aneela Salman has said the foundation’s public-private partnership model based free schooling programmes have helped needy children reach schools for their studies free of cost.
Presiding over a coordination meeting at her office on Saturday, she further said PEF was working hard to achieve the targets of “Parho Punjab-Barho Punjab” by regularly extending its programmes so that more and more needy children could benefit from these programmes.
The meeting also discussed progress on different educational programmes and it was told that PEF was targeted to enroll 2.8 million out of school/dropout children by the year 2018, while current enrolment had reached more than 1.7 million in 36 districts in Punjab. Discussing the importance of skills’ development programme, Dr Aneela said there was a need to empower students through useful market-oriented skills so that they could earn an honorable living.
For this purpose, PEF secondary school students should be given an opportunity to learn useful skills in their summer vacations, she added. The meeting, while commending the role of school partners in promoting education at grassroots, observed that high-performing partners might be facilitated so as to encourage their hard-work in the field of school education. Discussing the pilot project of vouchers-based evening schooling for mostly child-labourers and maids, MD PEF said this was helping such children to continue their education in the evening. She hoped the training of school partners about monthly electronic attendance system would help them to efficiently use this IT based system.