GUJRAT: At least 100,000 children between four and 16 years of age will be enrolled in schools in Gujrat as the district government will launch a special campaign from April 1 under the Universal Primary and Secondary Education Programme of the Punjab government.

A ceremony to launch the campaign was held in the education department here on Thursday with DCO Liaquat Ali Chattha in the chair while EDO (Education) Kashif Tahir and other officials were also present.

The meeting decided to reduce the dropout rate and take measures to enroll children in schools by involving influential figures, teachers and heads of schools during the official drive.

The DCO urged teachers and school heads to first ascertain the exact number of children not attending schools in their respective areas and then persuade parents to send them to school.

If parents refused to oblige, he said such cases should be referred to the district government so as to take punitive action against them.

Meanwhile, the district government has decided to conduct a survey through secretaries of union councils to ascertain the number of out-of-school children.

The survey will be monitored by the DCO office and the education department.

FREE BOOKS: The Punjab Education Foundation has provided at least 90,108 free textbooks to its 75 partner schools in Gujrat, Gujranwala, Jhelum and Mandi Bahauddin districts.

Punjab Education Foundation director Kamran Hafeez handed over these books to partner schools in a function held at a partner school in Daulat Nagar Town in Gujrat district on Thursday.

Mr Hafeez said that at least 4,000 schools across Punjab had been partners of the education foundation where at least 1.6 million students were getting education.

He said the foundation had set up some 20 centers throughout the province to distribute free textbooks among partner schools.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2015

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