LAHORE: There is an urgent need to involve local government officials in school management committees of public schools across Punjab for an effective utilisation of funds.

A resolution in this regard was adopted at the launch of a budget tracking social accountability study titled “Do Schools Get Money?” by the Pakistan Coalition for Education on Monday.

The study covered 10 districts of Punjab, six of Sindh, five of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, two of Balochistan and one of Azad Kashmir.

The data was collected from 2,312 schools, of which 1,376 were of boys and 716 girls. Information pertaining to student enrollment and attendance, teacher demographics, school management councils’ (SMC) structure and missing facilities was gathered from them.

The study says more than half of the schools surveyed had only one teacher to teach all classes.

“This fact shows to which extent our education system gets affected by the problem of teacher absenteeism. It was also found that 90 per cent of the schools receive school council grants. Despite receiving funds, these school management committees are not effective. Therefore there is a need for the capacity building of these management committees which can result in getting more proactive towards issues like teacher absenteeism and ineffective resource use,” it says.

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2015

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