Staff Reporter
Peshawar
A mega development plan worth Rs. 207 billion has been formulated for revival and development of education sector in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the wake of coronavirus crisis. As per development plan, special focus would be made on construction of new schools, colleges, recruitment of teachers, infrastructure development and strengthening of public sector universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, officials sources in Education Department told on Sunday.
Under the plan, conditions of 26,000 schools would be improved in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where lack of facilities like washroom rooms, boundary walls, clean drinking water and shortage of teachers would be addressed in the current fiscal year. For effective management and supervision of schools and teachers performance, the Education Department would recruit additional 3,000 Assistant Sub District Education Officers for all 35 districts in KP.
Likewise, 3,000 schools leaders would be recruited for effective schools management besides financial resources would be provided for purchase of tablets for training of teachers for education of students in the wake of COVID-19 to save students time. As many as 1,210 schools would be uplifted and 534 schools was being upgraded besides construction of 300 new schools.
To promote higher education in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Provincial Government would spent Rs1 billion on strengthening of public sector universities with allocation of Rs110.6 million for UET Swat in budget 2020-21. Similarly, Rs1.3 billion would be spent on construction of 74 new colleges accross the province and Rs500 million for establishment of Pak-Austria Fachashule Institute at Haripur.
The official said COVID-19 has affected education sector in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where about 27,350 Government schools including 21,180 primary, 255 community, 791 maktab and 5,538 secondary schools with a total enrollment of 4.381 million students and 6,743 private schools with an enrollment of 2.069 million had been closed since March due coronavirus pandemic.
Under the development plan, the official said special focus would be made to bring about 253,175 street children under schools net from new academic year. He said the main reasons behind the substantial number of out of schools children especially girls was corporal punishment, poverty, english as medium of instructions, economic imbalances, lack of parents interest and early marriages.
He said 64pc of the country’s population were below 30 years of age and all such children and youth needs meaningful education especially upto metric level made compulsory under artical 25-A of the constitution. He said closing of educational institutions for a longer period was not in the country and people’s interest and Govt was mulling to open educational institutions under SOPs to avoid further academic loss.
The official said TeleSchool television channel launched by Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training and PTV was an important initiative to provide quality education to children at homes during the pandemic. The channel was available on satellite, terrestrial and cable by broadcasting education programmes from 8:00 a.m to 5:00p.m every day for grades 1 to 12 students. English, maths, urdu and general science lessons was being taught to junior students at morning and others subjects for seniors students in afternoon session.
