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WB consultants check childhood education project

2015-09-16
TOBA TEK SINGH: A World Bank delegation checked on Tuesday the implementation and analysis impact of an early childhood education project, launched by the district government with the Punjab Directorate of Staff Development and Unicef.

The project is aimed to attract enrollment and discourage dropout by making the schools child friendly throughvariousinterventions.

District Coordination Officer (DCO) Amir Ijaz Akbar urged the consultants to further improve the project activities. District Monitoring Officer (DMO) Asif Ali Dogar briefed the delegation that out of 1,208 schools in the district, 1,174 had primary portions where early childhood education rooms were being established.

In the first phase, 300 child friendly rooms have been developed in as many schools to attract out-ofschool children into a formal education. The remaining schools will be covered in the next two phases. He said special early education caregivers had been recruited tolook afterthe children.

A training has been imparted to caregivers, teachers, head teachers and members of school councils.

Early childhood education rooms have been decorated with pictures and child friendly interventions and themes. Local community is also actively involved in the project to have their ownership in the concept .

The district administration launched an awareness campaign to make the local people familiar with early childhood education. The DMO said there had been a considerable increase in enrollment of nursery class since the start of project and it would be a challenge to ensure their retention in the next classes.

The DCO informed the delegation that deliberating were in progress for the extension of early childhood education concept to whole primary cycle of education. He urged the intervention of World Bank to bridge this gap and sought their assistance for extension of this project to the whole primary cycle of education. Correspondent