Performance of education department historic, claims Saeed Ghani

For the financial year 2020-21, the Sindh government set the budget for maintenance and repair of schools and colleges at Rs21 billion, out of which Rs12 billion has been released and Rs8.2 billion spent so far.

“We have shuttered the schools, chances of revival of which were very low while out of 2,247 schools that had been closed due to shortage of teachers, 1,609 have been reopened,” said Education and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani.

He expressed these views while participating in the pre-budget debate in the Sindh Assembly on Friday. He claimed that the performance of the education and labour departments has been historic.

Ghani remarked that the provincial government was being criticised over quality of education but the ground facts and evidence testified otherwise. “We have taken historic steps to make education better. More tangible steps were in terms of online education as compared to other provinces.”

He added that in collaboration with Microsoft, the Sindh government had made it possible to extend online education to the school level. “Even now, 257,000 students are benefiting from it and we have also provided training to 30,787 secondary teachers.”

He claimed that at the same time, under the Sindh Education Foundation's Microsoft online programme, around 252,000 children across the province were studying online and more than 4,000 primary teachers had been trained in providing education to these children.

Ghani said that during the outgoing financial year, 70 per cent of the education department’s released budget was spent on colleges and schools, while 55 per cent of the released budget for maintenance and repair had been utilised.

He added that of the 269 ongoing schemes for schools, 155 schemes would be completed by June, while of the 69 schemes for college, 24 schemes would be completed in the current financial year, under which 29 colleges and two cadet colleges would be completed.

The education minister said that some quarters had criticised the Sindh government for the lack of furniture in schools while the fact was that a stay order had been imposed by the esteemed judiciary in this regard for the last two years. He explained that in April, the stay order was lifted, after which tenders had been issued.

"We need 1.6 million desks across the province and this is not possible in a few months. However, we will be able to ensure the availability of furniture at schools by this financial year and the beginning of the next financial year," he said.

He informed the legislature that the education department had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Sukkur Institute of Business Administration for recruitment of 37,000 new teachers on merit; however, due to the present Covid-19 situation, the Sukkur IBA could not hold the competition exams.

In order to improve the quality of education, the grade of PST teachers has been lifted from nine to 14, Ghani said, adding that from now onwards, those who would be recruited as primary teachers would also be retired as primary teachers. The education minister stated that the government had made arrangements for training the teachers so that qualified teachers could be available at each school.