LAHORE, Sept 25: The Punjab government has decided to extend the community schools programme to colleges, technical institutions and non-functional schools.

The Punjab education department is already running the project in over 6,000 government schools in the province since May last year. Under the project, the private sector has been engaged to arrange afternoon classes in government schools.

It has been learnt that the education department has received a directive from the president to ensure sustainable implementation of the project as well as its expansion to government colleges and non-functional schools.

Punjab Community Schools Monitoring and Evaluation Cell director Jamil Najam told Dawn on Wednesday that the department was working on the feasibility of expanding the project and would soon send its proposal to the education department. He said the department was expected to propose that the private sector should be given full charge of non-functional schools, both in morning and afternoon. The private sector will also be engaged to operate degree classes in colleges, he added.

All NGOs, trusts, affluent people, retired teachers, educated persons, civil/armed forces employees, teacher’s organizations and school councils are eligible to apply for running community model schools and colleges.

It may be mentioned that the education department has launched the project to bring those students to schools who either drop out or cannot get admission to regular schools due to one reason or the other.

Under the programme, private partners must either pay all utility bills of the regular school and look after maintenance of its building or deposit 10 per cent of their income with the morning school management. The private partners have also been told not to charge a student more than Rs300 a month.

As many as 6,116 community model schools are currently functioning across the province, where around 45,000 students are enrolled.

A survey of the community schools, however, showed that a majority of private partners were facing problems as they were unable to meet the requirements of their agreement with the department. They claim that they cannot even afford the salaries of their staff.

Janat Bibi, who has arranged afternoon classes at Gulberg’s Government Central Model High School under the programme, said the regular school management was asking her to pay the school’s outstanding water bills worth Rs45,000 besides other utility bills and whitewash the building.

The morning school’s headmistress, Ishrat Jabeen, said the government had stopped releasing funds since the launching of the project. She said the community schools management had created a row instead of being cooperative.

However, Mr Najam said the problem lay in the attitude of some regular school’s heads rather than the bills.