10 February 2005	Thursday	30 Zilhaj 1425

LAHORE, Feb 9: World Bank President James D. Wolfenson has approved the extension of the Punjab Chief Minister's Education Sector Reforms Programme for the next 10 years.

The World Bank provides $100 million every year in addition to $200 million it had already granted for the programme. This was stated by Punjab Education Minister Mian Imran Masood at a prize-distribution ceremony of a private school here on Wednesday.

He said the World bank president during a recent meeting with the Punjab government representatives highly commended the Punjab government's social development programme in the shape of Vision-2020 of the CM. He said Mr Wolfenson had described these initiatives as practical steps towards eradication of poverty and development of infrastructure in the province.

He said the WB president had also expressed satisfaction over the pace of implementation of the ESRP and called it a result-oriented scheme.

Under the ESRP, he said, the government had provided 22.2 million textbooks worth Rs494 million to 8.8 million students studying in government primary schools.

In the next financial year, he said, the programme of free distribution of textbooks would be extended to those students studying in Class-VI to Class-VIII, which would cost Rs600 million.

The minister said the government was also giving Rs200 stipend to each girl student in selected 15 low literacy districts to check dropout rate. For the distribution of stipend to 200,000 girls during first year, the government had allocated Rs350 million.

He said the Punjab Education Foundation had been restructured with reduced bureaucratic control and allocation of Rs100 million for the first year. He said 70 per cent of the funds of the foundation would be lend to rural and poor areas. The net effect of the ESRP had resulted in an increase of 900,000 students' enrolment at the primary level, he said.

According to the minister, some 50,000 graduate teachers had been recruited on a school-specific contract assignments. He also said the government had ordered to fill in all vacancies of teachers by the end of this financial year.

Besides, it was stressing teacher training programmes. As many as 90,000 teachers, out of the 150,000, had completed their training so far.

Mr Masood said the government had also earmarked Rs500 million for school councils during the current year. These councils, headed by parents, allocated 50 per cent seats to parents.

He said the government had also created the Punjab Monitoring and Evaluation Cell to oversee the implementation of the ESRP. The officials of the cell had so far inspected 6,265 schools and submitted 5,278 observations about the use of substandard building material, absenteeism of teachers and charging of additional fee.

He said the PMEC officials were visiting the development scheme sites, checking attendance of teachers and provision of other facilities.

In the light of the PMEC officials' report for September, October and November last year, he said the education department was taking action on 763 complaints about defective construction, 763 absenteeism and 180 complaints about charging additional fee.