FDE takes steps to boost educational institutions’ performance

Islamabad: Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) has taken numerous steps to boost performance of ICT Educational Institutions, including audit of previous four years of educational institutions, distribution of cheques worth Rs120 million among families of bereaved employees, launching of blended-e-learning programme and implementation of Learn Smart Classroom project in the 80 schools.

Talking to APP, FDE Director General Dr Ikram Ali Malik Monday said that the audit would be conducted of the fees charged from children during last four years, bank accounts, hostel funds and graduation funds.

The details of the employee salaries, evening shifts and the expenditures of the vehicles were also being investigated. The embezzlement in the expenditures of model colleges were also being probed.

The details of vouchers, cashbook, vehicles logbook, stock register and the approval of the authorities concerned for hiring of daily wages have been demanded from FDE educational institutions, he said.

FDE was taking key initiatives to resolve the issues of teaching and non-teaching staff and public educational institutions of Islamabad on priority basis and also to resolve the record number of promotion cases of teaching and non-teaching staff during last six months, said Dr Ikram.

He said, as many as 500 science teachers would join FDE educational institutions through Federal Public Service Commission during the current year. While more than 200 fellowships would be awarded to the graduates of country’s ten renowned universities, under a project of World Bank.

He said that all cases of pensions have also been resolved. According to Dr Ikram Ali Malik, the cheques worth Rs120 million had been distributed among 30 family members of deceased employees, who died during service at different educational institutions.

He said that dues of family members of bereaved were pending since 2013 due to lack of funds, adding that a supplementary grant of Rs380 million had been taken for the early provision of dues among them.

In line with the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan the use of technology in the education, he said, an agreement was signed among FDE, Knowledge Platform, Tele Taleem and Robotics mean for launching of Blended Learning project.

Blended learning is an approach to education that combines online education materials and opportunities for interaction online with traditional place based classrooms methods. He said that in this research-based pilot project different technologies would be used in different levels of education to test and understand the effectiveness of these technologies on the learning of students.

Dr Ikram further said that FDE in collaboration with a private organisation would implement a project Learn Smart Classroom in the 80 schools of Islamabad to provide robust holistic digital teaching, learning, and assessment opportunities.

As part of this project, the organisation over a period of three-year will provide 80 classrooms with the required blended learning infrastructure, an offline Learning Management System that works without the Internet in the classroom, an Artificial Intelligence enabled cloud-based Learning Management System synchronized with the offline platform, digital content for grades 6-8 Mathematics, Science and English comprising of animated videos, games, activities and digital assessments, teacher training for teachers in the selected schools and in-school support and in-depth analytics and reports for school heads, teachers and teachers, he added.