PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench on Tuesday directed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa elementary and secondary education department to file report on the alleged poor performance of the government`s educational institutions in the recent secondary school certificate examinations in the province by and large and the government`s steps for increasing enrolment of out-of-school children.Justice Qaiser Rasheed Khan and Justice Mohammad Ayub Khan also asked the government if the relevant department acted against the people responsible for poor performance at the government schools.

The bench observed that it was unfortunate that the improvement in the education sector as claimed by the government was not visible despite the spending of billions of rupees during the last couple of years.

It fixed Sept 5 for the next hearing into the petition of a nongovernmental organisation, Society for Access to Quality Education, seeking the court`s directives for the provincial government to enrol out-of-school children in line with Article 25-A of the Constitution.

Lawyer Haider Imtiaz defendedthe petitioner in the case, whereas additional advocate general Mian Arshad Jan, additional secretary of the elementary and secondary education department Mohammad Arshad Khan and deputy secretary (legal) Enayatullah Khan appeared for the government.

Haider Imtiaz said in KP, hundreds of thousands of children of school-going age had so far not been admitted to educational institutions.

He said a survey put the number of out-of-school children in the country at around 25 million and 22 per cent of them were in KP.

The government`s representatives claimed that around Rs22 billion had been spent on the provision of missing facilities, including boundary walls, electricity, water, washrooms and furniture, to schools during the last fewyears.

The bench observed that it was alarming that despite the spending of such a huge sum of money, the standard of education in government schools had declined.

It added that most people had enrolled their children in government schools over inability to pay fee of private schools and not over `good` education offered to them.

The government`s representatives said currently, 10 per cent of the government schools were without boundary walls; 35 per cent schools were without electricity; 25 per cent ware without potable water, and 11 per cent were without washrooms.

They added that Rs9 billion were allocated in the present 201718 provincial budget by the provincial government for provision of these facilities.The government`s representatives blamed the delay in provision of facilities on the non-functioning of parent-teacher councils in around 27 per cent schools saying the funds were to be utilised through those councils under the rules.

The bench directed the government to make efforts for providing missing facilities to schools at the earliest and produce a report within a month.

It observed that it was the need of the hour that the government should take action against the people responsible for the declining standard of education in its schools.

The petitioner claimed that a large number of children begged and scavenged or worked as labourers instead of going to school for formal education.