LAHORE: Up to 45,000 children aged 4-9 years are still out of schoolin Lahore and the education department is trying to enroll them and sustain their retention in classrooms.

Executive District Officer (EDO) Pervaiz KhantoldDawnonTuesday he hoped they would be enrolled by Oct 31.`During a survey conducted early this year, it emerged 290,000 childrenin Lahore are out of schools,` he said. `Of them, we have succeeded in enrolling 245,000 till Tuesday.

He said in surveys they learned that the quality of education, missing facilities in schools and financial problems of parents and teachers were major reasons behind poor enrollment in public schools. The same reasons were behind dropouts in public primary schools.

He said assistant and deputy education officers had been asked to adopt two primary schools for two months and ensure quality education and retention of students there.He said there were 1,246 public schools in Lahore. Of them, Lahore`s education ofñcers adopted 286 schools in phase one and another 271 in the phase two.

He said field teams were visiting schools every day meeting parents and convincing them to get their children admitted to public schools.

`On Tuesday, the teams visited servant quarters of the GOR-I and convinced the parents to send their children to schools,` the EDO said.

He said the department had also provided missing facilities like boundary walls, classrooms, electricity, playgrounds and washrooms to all Lahore schools. KHALID HASNAIN