KARACHI, Nov 6: The Sindh government is making all-out efforts to materialise the dream of hundred per cent literacy in the province and steps are being taken to reopen 1,300 closed schools of the province.
This was stated by the Sindh Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim here on Monday, while talking to newsmen at the Chief Minister’s House.
He said that Sindh was the only province maintaining computerised data of the enrolled students. The chief minister said that 1,200 more schools were being opened in the province, besides setting up an English medium school in every taluka.
He said that a reform programme in the province had already been kicked off to improve the standard of education and for the same purpose monitoring committees had been formed in the 23 districts of the province.
Dr Arbab said that the Sindh government had tagged Rs41.7 billion for education sector in 2006-7 and added that the proper utilisation of these funds would brighten the future of 5.2 million students of Sindh.
He said that the three basic requirements to ensure improvement of educational standards were recruitment of teachers on merit, training of teachers and reforms of textbooks and examination system and added that the government was focusing on all these three requirements.
Dr Arbab said that presently 41,713 primary, 2,600 middle, 1,747 higher secondary schools, 406 colleges and 199 vocational colleges were working in the province and some 5 million children were enrolled with these schools. He said that there was a dire need to raise number of these children. He said that it would be a big success if some one million out-of-school children were sent to primary schools of the province.
Dr Arbab informed that the provincial government had paid a tranche of Rs2 billion to the district governments to improve the condition of schools adding that the second instalment of these funds would be given to the district government keeping in view their performance in this regard.
He said that free textbooks worth Rs758 million had been distributed amongst 4.2 million children in Sindh including 0.265 million girls and scholarships worth Rs500 million were being spent amongst students of the province.
To a question, Dr Arbab said that a check and balance system on scientific lines was chalked out to ensure constant monitoring of educational standards.
He said that the salaries of teachers in the province had been raised and presently a government primary teacher was earning Rs7,000 per month, while a primary teacher of private school was not earning more than Rs1,500 per month.—PPI
