PESHAWAR, July 6: Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (Sparc) has renovated flood-affected buildings of 42 schools in Charsadda and Nowshera districts and encouraged students to continue with their enrolments.

This was shared with the participants of a function organised here to mark the completion of the two-year ‘improving school enrolment and retention rate in flood-affected areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’ project.

Sparc regional manager Jehanzeb Khan said the project was meant to bring 70 per cent of students back to schools and the target had successfully been achieved.

He said children were attracted back to the schools after the buildings and playing areas were renovated and teachers trained to teach with love than corporal punishment.

Mr Jehanzeb said the community was involved especially families that were unable to afford their children’s education during the project so that children didn’t drop out due to poverty.

Inayat Rehman, a schoolteacher from Charsadda, who got training under the project, said when he came to school after the 2010 floods, he found half of the children gone.

“It was shocking as floods damaged school and children were afraid to be there. However, this project helped them get back to studies,” he said.

Sparc project manager Wajid Khan said around 6,000 children of school going age were focused under the project, which got underway in 2011.

He said the community was engaged through formation of PTCs and that teachers were trained to teach with love instead of corporal punishment.

“Even 55 families in Nowshera and Charsadda which were poor were provided with financial support so that their children could continue their education. Women were provided with sewing machines or Rs15,000 to buy goat for income generation,” he said.

Sparc national programme manager Imtiaz Ahmed said the organisation had been working on juvenile justice since 1992, lobbying for legislation on issues like child labour, violence against children and monitoring of child abuses by strengthening the civil society.

He said under the schools renovated under the two-year project were a model for the government to follow.

He complained that child rights were not part of the election manifestos of many major political parties.

Other speakers urged the government to improve the quality of education at government schools and suggested that every government official get their children enrolled in government schools as this would improve the quality of education in the public sector.

Education department official Aqeela, however, said if political support to teachers was done away with, standard of teaching in government schools would improve.

She said the government would have to take tangible steps to bring its schools on a par with those of the private sector.