KARACHI: Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah on Saturday gave a target to the Sindh Education Foundation (SEF) to make concerted efforts to enrol 250,000 additional children in schools from the next academic year.

Presiding over a meeting of the SEF board of governors (BoG) at CM House, Mr Shah stressed that the target he had given to SEF should be taken on priority.

The meeting was attended by additional chief secretary (development) Ajaz Ali Khan, principal secretary to the chief minister Alimuddin Bullo, Dr Kaiser Bengali and Dr Qazi Masood, member, SEF-BoG, Naheed Shah Durrani, managing director, SEF, and Alia Shahid, special secretary education and literacy department.

Briefing the meeting, Ms Durrani said SEF was entering into a partnership with a number of credible organisations, including The Citizen Foundation, Indus Resource Centre and Sindh Madrassa Board for pooling of resources, learning and exchanges and implementation of its projects. These partnerships would benefit the marginalised and vulnerable children of Sindh, she said.

The CM said that through collective efforts and input the state of education in the province could be significantly improved.

The SEF head said the foundation had already set a target to bring in out-of-school children and it aspired to register around 250,000 additional children in schools by the beginning of next academic year (2016-17). She added that quality for SEF was a non-negotiable agenda and it would not be compromised in pursuance of increasing enrolment.

Briefing about various programmmes of the foundation, Ms Durrani referred to different survey reports showing there were around 2.5 million adolescents in Sindh who might have dropped out of school or never had been to school. These adolescent children, especially the vulnerable children (street children; bonded labour etc) aged between nine and 18 years, required combined accelerated learning and skill development programmes, she added.

SEF proposed to launch an adult and adolescent learning programme for that segment of society which the chief minister as chairman of SEF board approved.

The meeting was informed that SEF was exploring options of partnerships with some reputable organisations already working with vulnerable segments of society. Ms Durrani shared with the media a list of potential partners.

SEF officials told the meeting that Sindh like other provinces faced a huge vacuum in post-primary education as the participation rate in post-primary education was alarmingly low in Sindh.

Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2016