LAHORE: Asking the Punjab school education department to ensure sustainable students participation rate at 95 per cent in public schools by the middle of next year, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has directed the secretary schools to raise the benchmark to 98pc.

The department is also ready to mitigate the problem of multi-grade teaching in primary schools with the induction of 80,000 more teachers from the upcoming academic session.

The government, in an effort to retain students, is busy constructing 6,000 new classrooms in public schools.

The chief minister has directed the department to ensure availability of a tablet in each public school within a month in order to digitize and equip the schools across Punjab.

Shahbaz is also scheduled to distribute 17,000 solar sets to the schools in far-flung areas on Saturday (today).

These decisions were taken in a review meeting of the Chief Minister’s School Reforms Roadmap chaired by the chief minister here on Thursday.

Appreciating the availability of toilets in more than 99pc schools in the province, the chief minister stressed that more toilets should be constructed in respective schools where enrolment was higher. The CM directed the department to recruit 50,000 sweepers for public primary schools in the province, adding that soap should also be provided in all schools’ toilets.

Chief Secretary retired Capt Zahid Saeed said the induction of new teachers would upgrade two-teacher to four-teacher primary schools and largely address the multi-grade teaching problem.

Secretary schools Abdul Jabbar Shaheen said the department had completed the process of recruitment of 80,000 new teachers and they would be joining schools at the beginning of the new academic session.

He said the department had conducted a survey of increase in enrolment of students in public and private schools as well as provision of missing facilities. “A consultation firm has been hired through a competitive process for a third party validation -- to be conducted in 10 weeks beginning from March 1,” he said.

Regarding monitoring of schools in terms of students and teachers attendance and other factors leading to imparting of quality education, he said the existing DTEs would be replaced with assistant education officers (AEOs) having purview of monitoring 10 schools in their respective jurisdictions.

He said the department would adjust from its available budget, including the non-salary budget, to ensure cleanliness in toilets.

On the chief minister’s direction, the secretary schools committed that all 52,000 public schools would be directed to purchase tablets from their own non-salary budget next month.

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2017