KARACHI, June 2: The fifth and last phase of teachers’ training under Sindh Middle School Project came to an end on Monday with the distribution of certificates among 350 teachers drawn from government schools of Sindh.

Provincial Minister for Education Irfanullah Marwat was the chief guest at the concluding ceremony.

In all, 5,100 teachers were imparted training under the In-service Training Programme for Professional Development of Middle School Teachers. The programme had begun on Dec 23, 2002.

Under the project, funded by the Asian Development Bank, 22 selected teachers were sent on study tours to the US, Philippines and Australia and on the basis of their reports, training manuals and programmes for the teachers were prepared here.

Initially, 156 head teachers and 580 teachers were imparted training as ‘trainers’ who later conducted training programmes for teachers from each district where 105 head teachers and 160 teachers were selected for the training. The trainees from four districts were entrusted with the task in each phase.

The training programmes were organized at NIPA (Karachi) and IBA (Sukkur and Hyderabad) during which the emphasis was laid on school management, finance, etc., in case of head teachers while the other teachers were trained in modern teaching methods, skill development and different other disciplines.

Addressing the certificate distribution ceremony, held at NJV School, Mr Marwat revealed that the provincial government would allocate Rs19 billion for education sector in the budget 2003-04.

He expressed dissatisfaction over the fact that none of the students from government schools in Karachi could secure any position in the SSC-I & II examination, results of which had just been announced.

Mr Marwat said that promotions of teachers in future would be linked to the results of the examination and the training programmes attended by them.

He said that since the students from interior Sindh could not compete with the students from urban areas owing to lack of facilities,, it would be difficult to observe the principle of merit in recruitment. Therefore, he added, the vacant posts would be filled with the people from same area.

The minister pointed out that 179 primary schools were upgraded this year while 200 new middle schools would be established during the new fiscal year.

Taking a serious note of the delay in inviting tenders for the procurement of computers for schools, he warned that if it was found that the funds had lapsed due to slackness of some officials, the case would be referred to the National Accountability Bureau.

Earlier, Mahmood Lakho, Project Director of Middle School Project, Sindh, Mrs Talat Jaskani, Manager of the Project, Gul Hassan Hajano, principal of the NJV School, representatives of trainers and trainees also addressed the ceremony.—PPI