LAHORE: The Punjab School Education Department requires some 78,000 new classrooms to accommodate out-of-school children. This preposition, however, has a huge financial implication as one classroom costs around Rs700,000.

The financial implication shows that there is hardly any possibility that such mammoth construction could be done, says a policy brief on ‘Impact of Urbanisation on Girls Education in Punjab’ launched by the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative in collaboration with the Punjab School Education Department and Unicef at a local hotel on Monday.

At the event, another policy brief on ‘Impact of climate change on the education of most excluded children in Punjab’ was also launched.

Explaining the recommendations to check the impact of urbanisation, ACE Consulting Group’s Umer Raza said another pragmatic approach could be the usage of existing resources at optimum level. He suggested the government introduce a double-shift or even triple-shift in schools to not only cater to all out-of-school children but also offer them flexible school timings.

The policy brief also suggested that scouts and girl guides and educated youth from other youth organisations be assigned a certain number of children to teach and become school education department’s resources serving on small stipends.

It also suggested home-based education as an alternate to schooling and mainstreaming of excluded children of 16-19 years age cohort through incentivisation of teachers.