KARACHI, Oct 30: The Sindh Education Foundation (SEF), on Tuesday, organised a 3-day workshop for the Parents Education Committees (PECs) which manages 10 fellow-ship schools in the Karachi district.
The Fellowship School Programme is an innovative education scheme of SEF to promote quality education through 100 per cent parental participation.
The programme was initiated in 1997 in the rural and semi urban areas of Sindh. The target communities of the programme are those neither too rich to be entitled nor too poor to sustain.
At present under the programme, 120 fellowship schools are operating in 7 districts of Sindh, providing quality education to 9500 girls and 900 boys in the rural and urban areas; 120 Parents Education Committees (PECs) comprising 840 volunteer parents are managing these schools.
361 teachers have been provided pre-service and in-service trainings; each fellowship school has a library with over 50 books to supplement the core curriculum, encouraging reading and problem- solving habits.
Regular teachers’ trainings are being organised to improve teachers’ competency.
The programme has achieved 90 per cent students’ and 97 per cent teachers’ attendance rate. Thereby increasing teachers and students contact time, a key element in the quality education delivery.
The objective of the workshop was to facilitate the PECs to critically review the programme and undertake strategic institutional planning for the next 5 years.
SEF has provided continuous technical and financial support since 1997 to the schools and their managing entities, so that these schools could be transformed into a “School Bases Management” model.
On December 31, these schools will be independently managed by the PECs and school staff. SEF will perform a support and capacity building role in the future for these schools.
The workshop participants concluded that the four- year programme strategy had enhanced their capacity in school management and also helped them to envision education development holistically.
They recommended that SEF should support them in areas such as institutional development, training, liaison with line departments and support organisations.—APP
