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Govt plans enrolment of poor children in private schools

By Mohammad Ashfaq 2015-04-02
PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government will enrol the under-privileged out-of-school children in private schools in six districts of the province. The UK`s Department for International Development (DFID) has pledged to provide funds for the pro-poor initiative, according to officials.

An estimated 38,000 children of the poor families would benefit from the initiative Iqra Faroghe Taleem Voucher Scheme in the areas where no government school was located in a radius of 1.5 kilometres, officials in the Elementary E ducation Foundation (EEF), told Dawn.

They said that admission of the poor children in private schools was one of the efforts of the government to reduce the number of out-of-school children. It is estimated that there are approximately 2.6 million out-of-school children between the ages 5 and 14 in the province. They said that the scheme would commence soon, most probably by the end of May with an allocation of Rs500 million.

The EEF has been tasked with executing the plan of enrolling the poor out-of-school children and making arrangements for them. The selected districts for the scheme include Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan, Kohat, Mansehra, Mardan and Swat.

The scheme purely meant for the poor children was launched nine months ago as a pilot project in selected areas of five union councils in Peshawar. The children whose parents couldn`t afford to admit them in the private schools are entitled to be selected, said the officials.

The EEF defines the under-privileged segment of the society as labourers, daily wagers, orphans, brick kiln worl(ers etc, they said.

The officials said that the districts where the project would be launched had been selected keeping in view the high number of out-of-school children and prevailing poverty.

They said that the government would pay Rs500 as tuition fee of the students enrolled in the private primary schools through vouchers to be given to the parents. Similarly, Rs600 and Rs800 would be paid for the students enrolled in the middle and high schools, respectively.

Asked about the selection criteria of the private schools, they said that the schools having capacity of absorbing additional students besides their own would be selected for enrolling such poor children.

They said that the selected schools should have all the basic facilities such as furniture, drinking water, boundary walls, lavatories, electricity, etc. According to EEF`s criteria, the classrooms should not be overcrowded rather availability ofone teacherfor35studentsinhighschoolsandone teacher for 30 students in the primary schools would ensured.

The officials said that a private firm had been hired for door-to-door campaign in the selected districts to identify the poor out-of-school children. They said that age limit of the targeted students had been set at 5-16 years.

The selected students would appear in the academic test after each six months so as to evaluate the performance of the students and teachers of the respective schools. In case, the performance of the students was not satisfactory the EEF would cancel the agreement with the school concerned. They said that the students would be admitted to another nearest private school to continue their education.