KARACHI: The Sindh government has decided to establish a Rs5 billion endowment fund to strengthen the Sindh Education Foundation (SEF) so that education could be imparted in areas where government schools do not exist.

The Rs5bn seed money for the fund is in addition to Rs2.2bn allocation made in the current financial year for the administrative and operational expenditures of the foundation.

Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah reviewed the performance of the foundation and its achievements during a meeting held here at CM House on Friday.

Speaking on the occasion, the CM, who is also the chairman of its board of governors, appreciated the efforts of the SEF management for adding 318 new schools with 40,000 enrolments in their existing cluster of 3,000 schools with 350,000 students across the province in the current month.

He asked them to expand the foundation’s educational network, especially in backward areas, to achieve the target of one million pupils’ enrolment by 2018 in the province on their part.

“An active participation of the community and qualitative teaching faculty can ensure the standard education to meet the challenges of the modern world,” he said.

The chief minister also directed the SEF management to consolidate their achievement and expenditure reports of the last two to three years with future plans of educational network within a week, so that they could be facilitated accordingly.

Earlier, the SEF Managing Director Aziz Kabani said that at present as many as 350,000 student were being provided free-of-cost qualitative education with a faculty of 9,000 teachers in its 3,000 schools across the province.

Besides, he said, 350 government schools had been adopted and 150 early childhood learning schools had been established by the SEF.

He said that another cluster of 664 schools were being run by his organisation under the promoting private schools in rural Sindh (PPRS) project, where 90,000 students were getting education free of cost.

He said that the education network of the SEF was spread over even in the arid zones of Tharparkar and Nara in Khairpur where the management of the schools was trying to recruit teachers from the local community on merit.

“In order to ensure the delivery of qualitative education to the children the SEF is spending Rs42 million to Rs60 million per year to provide training to between 5,000 and 6,000 teachers under the learning support programme.

He also recalled that 80 per cent of the total budget was being spent to support the schools while only 20pc was utilised for the operational purpose.

Providing further insight into its working, he said that the foundation was spending Rs450 per student per month, which was four times less than around Rs2,200, being spent by the provincial education department.

However, he recommended to raise the amount to Rs700 due to high inflation rate.

Mr Kabani also briefed the meeting about problems being experienced by the foundation, including a financial crunch and administrative problems.

He also informed the meeting that as many as 318 new schools were also being added to the cluster of the SEF schools in November 2014 to facilitate 40,000 more students and create jobs opportunities for hundreds of teachers.

Welcoming the announcement of the endowments fund, the MD recommended its early materialisation for the benefit of the poor students.

Earlier, participants in the meeting prayed for the departed soul of eminent educationalist Anita Ghulam Ali and paid tribute to the services she rendered in the field of education especially from the SEF’s platform.

The participants observed that the legacy of Ms Ali would remain alive in the hearts of millions of people and beneficiaries of her services.

Published in Dawn, November 1st, 2014