May 21, 2007	Monday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 04, 1428

LAHORE, May 20: The Punjab government has provided Rs3.8 billion to the Punjab Education Foundation to provide financial assistance to the less-privileged private schools in the province.

As many as 750,000 students of these schools will benefit from the foundation assisted schools programme by the end of this year.

This was stated by Punjab Education Foundation chairman Shahid Hafeez Kardar while presiding over a meeting of the Board of Directors of the foundation here on Sunday.

Mr Kardar said the programme would greatly help strengthen public and private education sector. It had been extended to 1,500 schools in Punjab.

He said during the current year 483 workshops had been organised and 25,000 teachers of 5,000 schools given training for their professional development. The academic development unit of the foundation was playing a key role in producing teachers of high calibre.

He said the Education Voucher Scheme proved to be highly beneficial and it had been decided to extend its network to other backward areas so that a maximum number of students could benefit from it.

Mr Kardar said partner schools for the financial assistance programme were being selected purely on merit.

The board was informed that quality service delivery had been the main consideration in running the professional development programme. To ensure quality training programmes, the partner organisations were now required to get their trainers accredited.

The board expressed satisfaction over the implementation of different schemes and international recognition accorded to various initiatives of the foundation.