PESHAWAR, May 2: On the one hand 2,642 teachers have become surplus in the boys primary schools, on the other a shortfall of 1,358 teachers has been recorded in the primary schools for girls in the Frontier.

This was revealed in a study carried out by the provincial education department’s literacy and schools wing to rationalize the requirements of teaching staff in the schools.

As a first step, the NWFP government has approved restructuring the education by merging the directorates of primary and secondary education into a single directorate. This exercise would result in savings of more than Rs 70 million.

A meeting held in the Governor’s House here on Thursday to review the education sector reforms and president’s programme of education development, approved a plan under which surplus teachers would be adjusted against existing network of schools.

The meeting was presided over by Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah and attended by Education Minister Syed Imtiaz Hussain Gillani, Finance Minister Farid Rehman, Chief Secretary and the secretaries of literacy and schools, finance and planning and development, according to a handout.

The governor said that the government was focusing on the quality and standard of education rather than expanding  the  network of schools  without  any  rational requirement.

The  meeting  was  also given a  presentation  on  the rationalization of primary schools and teaching staff deployment. The primary schools having an enrolment of up to 100 students would have two teachers, each Maktab and mosque school one teacher and one teacher for every 40 students, the meeting was informed. Thus, a school having 380 students would have at least nine teachers. The meeting was informed that Rs 66.47 million had been released by the federal government out of a total allocation of Rs 218.53 million. Similarly, under the president’s programme, Rs 155.23 million had so far been released against the total allocation of Rs 309.37 million.