KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, who had announced in his last budget speech that he would give every district at least one English-medium school with the Cambridge system in the public sector, was told on Thursday that 15 of 25 such schools are ready to start functioning by December 2018.

These schools would be run through private management while the government would bear all the expenditures, including tuition fee, textbooks, exercise material, registration fee, examination fee and even the salaries of the teaching and non-teaching staff while the private partner would have to run the management effectively.

This emerged at a meeting of the School Education Department, which was presided over by Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah here on Thursday at the CM House. The chief minister reviewing the progress of the new school buildings, said: “I want to start these English-medium schools by end of April”.

He directed the department to appoint 6,000 junior elementary school teachers so that early childhood education system, English-medium and comprehensive high schools could be started.

15 public sector schools under Cambridge system to open by December

He expressed his displeasure to know that the SNE of only five schools had been approved while 10 others were yet to be approved by the finance department. The chief minister giving approval of the SNE files during the meeting made it clear that he would not tolerate red tape. “I want that everything should be done in time,” he added.

Earlier, School Education Secretary Iqbal Durrani briefing the chief minister said that out of 25 under-construction English-medium school buildings, 15 were ready. In the first phase six schools would be ready to start functioning from March while nine others would be ready by December.

He said the school buildings which have been completed and are ready to start were in Shaheed Benazirabad, Sukkur, Larkana, Naushahro Feroze, Sanghar, Khairpur, Mirpurkhas, Tando Mohammad Khan, Ghotki, Thatta, Badin, Sujawal, Matiari, Tando Allahyar and Jamshoro. The schools which would be completed in 2018-19 are in Hyderabad, Umerkot, Dadu, Qambar-Shahdadkot, Jacobabad, Tharparkar and Malir while work on three other schools at Shikarpur, Kashmore and Karachi would be started next year.

Mr Durrani also briefed the meeting, which was attended by Minister for Education Jam Mehtab Dahar, P&D Chairman Mohammad Waseem, Principal Secretary to CM Sohail Rajput and other officers concerned.

He said the formation of recruitment rules for new 6,000 teachers was in process with the regulation wing. Under the approved arrangement, each English-medium school would have 69 staff members, including 39 teaching staff. Furniture for the 15 schools has been purchased. Every school would have a fully equipped science and computer lab, a library and a standby generator. These schools would be English-medium and would be operated on the Cambridge system, he added.

The chief minister said that it was quite difficult for the government to recruit good ‘O’ Level teachers in rural areas, therefore the task might be given to top educational institutions.

The minister and the secretary of school education were assigned the task to talk to leading educational institutions for running the management of these English-medium schools and then selection would be made through a competitive process.

He also said that the teachers for early childhood education should be recruited through genuine competitive process but these new teachers must be good at English, science and mathematics. Therefore, question papers for selection of teachers should be made accordingly. “Teachers’ training is most important and I want a comprehensive plan for capacity building of the teachers in the government sector,” he said.

Coal authority’s earning

The Sindh Coal Authority has earned Rs560 million under royalty and cess in 2015-16 and 2016-17.

This was stated by the SCA during its board meeting. The authority requested the chief minister to enhance the annual grant-in-aid from Rs50 million to Rs90m.

The chief minister, who was presiding over the 30th SCA board meeting here at the CM House on Thursday, keeping in view the performance and scope of the SCA enhanced its grant-in-aid to Rs100m with effect from June 1, 2018.

Published in Dawn, February 16th, 2018