‘20,000 teachers recruited in KP to overcome shortages’

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has recruited over 20,000 teachers across the province to overcome the shortage of teaching staff in schools.

This was stated by Advisor to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister on Education Ziaullah Bangash while talking to media here on Sunday. The advisor said reforms were being introduced in the education sector to improve its performance and enhance literacy ratio in the province.

The KP government had chalked out a new mechanism for posting of teachers in schools to improve the quality of primary education in the province. He said according to the new mechanism, at least four teachers would be posted in every primary school, adding one teacher per 20 students would be posted in each primary school across the province.

The merged tribal areas wear a bleak picture of student attendance and facilities available at educational institutes. Thus steps are needed to revamp all such facilities to attract the students to schools.

A report compiled by the Independent Monitoring Unit (IMU) of the Education Department assessed the performance of 98 percent schools in the province, which included seven tribal districts and six Frontier Regions. The monitors visited 5,788 government schools out of 5,889 and prepared a comprehensive report.

The report findings indicated that the attendance percentage of teachers in schools was 82 percent, while 62 percent students attended schools regularly. Commenting on the report, Ziaullah Bangash said the incumbent government was making efforts to ensure the availability of basic facilities in schools, under the directives of Prime Minister Imran Khan.

He said Rs36 billion would be spent over the facilitation of education in tribal areas under the new fiscal budget 2019-20. The adviser said the IMU services had now been extended to the tribal areas and Frontier Regions, just after their merger into the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

He said the government was introducing the education reforms in the merged areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Ziaullah Bangash said Rs 18 billion had been allocated for schools in the merged area, adding more funds would be allocated to bring them at par with other areas of the province. He said soon he would hold public forums in every district to accommodate the people suggestions on bringing reforms in the education sector, adding he had sought details of all teachers working in merged areas.

Ziaullah said digitalization of education sector had been started to improve quality of education by providing state of the art education tools to teacher and students. Ziaullah Bangash said in the first stage technical and information technology training had been imported to 17,000 teachers.