PESHAWAR: The Dec 16 Army Public School incident has jolted the education authorities in the province – and for the better – as a huge sum of Rs6.2 billion has been allocated to ensuring that over 5,000 schools have the boundary walls and other facilities missing there.

The Conditional Grant Programme, launched in 2011 with one million Great Britain Pounds (GBP) and successfully spread from two districts to all the 25 districts of the province now, has allocated more funds for the current year to ensure that children in government schools are safe with a boundary wall, have a classroom to study, water to drink and latrine to use in time of need.

According to the assessment of Education Management Information System (EMIS), majority of the schools of province were identified with missing facilities.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has allocated a total conditional grant of Rs8 billion for provision of missing facilities via parent-teacher councils (PTCs) in the current budget. This will benefit around 12,800 schools for provision of missing facilities and improvement of infrastructure. Under this allocation, the government is providing around 20,000 missing facilities in schools which include boundary walls, additional classrooms, group latrines, water supply, electrification and solar panels.

The government would cover all the schools in 25 districts to ensure that 100 per cent schools have boundary walls, 80 per cent of schools at least have group latrines and 35 per cent of total requirement for water supply and 10 per cent need of additional classrooms are met with these funds this financial year.

Infrastructure of 12,800 schools being improved

An official document available with Dawn shows that under the Conditional Grant (2014-15) Rs2 billion were allocated for the first phase for 3,238 government schools. Some 1,715 schools were provided boundary wall, 810 schools got group latrines, 824 supplied water, 743 electrification and 1,146 additional classrooms while 88 schools were provided with solar panels.

The document said that recently Rs6.2 billion conditional grant was given to schools in the second phase in view of the security concerns that were raised after the APS attack in Peshawar.

Earlier, Rs2 billion were provided as conditional grant for provision of missing facilities. The Rs6.2 billion grant will cover 5,065 schools and provide these with boundary walls. Earlier some 1,154 schools were covered and 18,82 more schools would be provided with additional classrooms; some 4,663 were covered previously and 4,663 would be provided with group latrine facility. Some 2,856 had the water and 2,856 would be provided with water, the document said.

The KP government, which has the international support for running its education programme, has been utilizing these conditional grants to ensure that dilapidated infrastructure and missing facilities are replaced with better facilities, officials said.

“The KP government is directing all of its energies to revive people’s faith in the public school system,” claimed an official of the education department. The official gave an example of a very positive change in the Government Girls’ Primary School, Sarai Salah, Haripur, where the government allocated a conditional grant of Rs800,000 to improve the infrastructure.

This school existed since 1928 and had been in a precarious condition for decades. The grant was utilised by the PTC of the school in building two additional classrooms on the upper floor, providing a roof on the structure already in place on the ground floor, whitewash of the school building and fixing the verandah floor.

The official said that the government had various programmes in progress for providing financial support for improving infrastructure, upgrading the conditions of the schools and classrooms and honing pedagogy and curricula.

Published in Dawn, May 6th, 2015

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