PESHAWAR, July 28: Giving effect to the Compulsory Primary Education Act, the NWFP government has set up school attendance authorities at union council and district levels to monitor children admission and enrolment in the state-run primary schools.

The provincial government has empowered the area magistrates to take necessary action against parents and employers who do not comply with the authority’s order to send their children to schools, official sources told Dawn. The decision has been taken to enhance enrolment in schools.

The provincial government has taken this step in view of the low literacy rate in the NWFP as according to a Unicef report only 38 per cent children of the primary school age (5-9 years) are enrolled in the Frontier province. Only 40 per cent of the population of 15 years and above is literate, with a wide disparity between males and females (59 per cent vs 21 per cent).

The provincial government has already set up 21,000 Parents Teachers Associations (PTAs) in primary schools to work as a supervisory and consultative body to remove the gap between the school and the society. The PTAs, set up on the recommendation of the World Bank, apparently did not make any progress.

According to a notification issued by the Provincial Schools and Literacy Department last week, school attendance authorities at union council level and district level have been constituted with immediate effect to monitor the children attendance and enrolment in primary schools. Each union council Nazim will head the authority while district level attendance authority will function under the chairmanship of the district Nazim.

Head master of a government high school/principal of a union council or middle school, two union council councillors (one male and one female) will be members of the authority at union council level. The Nazim has been authorised to nominate councillors as members of the authority.

The district level authority members are; tehsil Nazim, convener district education committee, executive district officer (male) and deputy district officer ( female).

According to the terms of reference, the authority will hold meetings with the parents and conduct awareness and publicity campaign and let the parents know about the importance of education, and the offences and punishments which can be awarded under the act.

The authority will prepare a list of children in the age group of 5-10 years along with their parents, their village and locality.

The authority will inform the employers of the school-going children of the consequences which they will face, in case of non-compliance with the provisions of the act. It will be responsibility of the authority to ensure that every child who is required to attend school under the act, attends the school where it is available within a distance of 1.5km.

The notification says if the parents fail to send their children to the school, the authority will meet the parents and persuade them to send their child/children to the school.

In case the parents/employers still failed to comply with the instruction, the authority will report such cases to the area magistrate for initiating action against the defaulting parents/employers as per provisions of the act.

The district level authority will monitor the progress of the union council school attendance authority in its annual meeting and also prepare the annual status report with regard to the implementation of the act and union council participation rate of the children in their respective districts. The district authority will submit its annual report to the provincial education department.