KARACHI, Oct 29: 120 fellowship schools operating in seven districts of the province under the Sindh Education Foundation (SEF) through the Parents Education Committees (PECs) will be handed over to these committees to run them independently from December 31.

The SEF will only perform a support and capacity building role in the future for these schools, the participants of a three-day workshop organized by the foundation for the PECs, who are managing ten Fellowship Schools in Karachi, were told.

The Fellowship Schools Programme was initiated in 1997 in the rural and semi-urban areas of the province to promote quality education through hundred per cent parental participation.

At present 120 Fellowship Schools are providing education to 9500 girls and 900 boys in the rural and urban areas of Sindh. The schools are operating through 120 PECs comprising 840 volunteer parents, 21 per cent mothers and 60 per cent fathers, who are managing them setting examples of the best practices of community participation.

About 361 teachers of these schools have been provided pre-service and in-service trainings and regular teachers’ training is being organized to improve their competency. The schools, having their own library to supplement the core curriculum, encourage reading, have achieved 90 per cent students’ and 97 per cent teachers’ attendance rate, thereby increasing the teachers and students’ contact time.

The objective of the workshop was to facilitate the PECs to critically review the programme and undertake strategic institutional planning for the next five years and transform the schools into a “School-Based Management “ model in which the PEC and Principals are enabled to organize quality education at the community level.

The workshop participants were of the view that four-year programme strategy has enhanced their capacity in school management. They recommended that the SEF should support them in institutional development, teachers and PECs’ training, liaison with line departments and support organizations.—PPI