MULTAN, Nov 25: The Punjab Education Department in collaboration with the Multi-donor Support Unit (MSU) is likely to arrange a workshop in Multan to develop the programme for strengthening School Councils (SCs).

The workshop will provide a forum to all stakeholders, including education officials, representatives from teachers and parents, students and communities, to share experiences.

The conference will aim at informing participants on how to strengthen Scs through capacity building and training, to share Punjab-related specific experiences in formation training and monitoring of SCs.

Views of community, parents, students and Education Department’s representatives regarding community participation in education will be given weight.

During the formation of the Scs, importance will be given to selecting people from all segments of society who can provide support that is helpful to effective monitoring.

Experience has shown that trained SCs are far more effective in contributing towards improving the efficiency of the schools than untrained ones.

As SCs will be receiving funds from different sources, a system will be formulated for their monitoring and assessment.

The fact that social development, especially in education and learning, cannot be achieved without effective partnership between government and the civil society bears testimony to the importance of setting up the SCs.

The establishment of the SCs will provide parents and communities a real voice and choice in the management of their children’s schools.

Parents’ participation in education of their children will result in some tangible results like increase in ownership of school facilities, increase in enrolment rates, decrease in drop-out rate, improvement in teacher’s attendance and an overall support for education in the community.

KILLED: Two persons were crushed to death by a trailer near Sher Shah Bypass on Sunday.