KARACHI: The Sindh Education Foundation (SEF) on Friday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with a non-profit organisation to enrol out-of-school children in Sindh, officials said.

They said the deal was part of the Sindh government’s target to enrol 250,000 out-of-school children.

The SEF had planned to enter into a strategic partnership with several other credible organisations in the coming weeks, they added.

According to the MoU, the SEF and the Education Fund for Sindh (EFS) will combine their resources under a joint committee to provide support to the EFS intermediary partners.

The officials said the MoU would enable the implementing partner to focus on improving the educational landscape in rural regions of Sindh.

Minister for Education and Literacy Nisar Khuhro said the government was committed to providing universal education as outlined under the 18th constitutional amendment.

“In Sindh, we face hard challenges in the shape of high dropout rate, low attendance and a lack of qualified staff,” said the minister. He claimed his ministry was aware of its responsibilities and was striving hard to improve the situation through visible improvements in access to quality education. He said accountability at all levels through IT-enabled systems had been introduced.

“Systems are now in place to streamline process of complaints and information on various interventions can now be instantly accessed.”

He called the partnership with the EFS as a significant development and said the partners shared a common vision of providing access to cost-effective education to every child in Sindh.

“By now the SEF has reached out to over 250,000 students and majority of those are in under-developed regions.”

Mr Khuhro said with the assistance of USAID, apart from rehabilitation and reconstruction of 120 schools, a fully fledged Sindh reading programme and the Sindh community mobilisation programme was in “advanced stage of implementation”.

“We have launched an education complaint redressal system. The department has introduced a text-based messaging system through which one can communicate with every section,” he added.

Naheed S. Durrani, managing director, SEF, said the SEF had committed itself to enrol nearly 100,000 out-of-school children under its various programmes including promoting private schooling in rural Sindh (PPRS) and SEF-assisted schools (SAS).

Khawaja Adeel Aslam, CEO, EFS, said they were currently engaged in addressing the education crisis through a multifaceted strategy of providing access to cost effective quality education to out-of-school children.

John A. Tucknott, British deputy high commissioner in Karachi, was among those attended the event.

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2016