PESHAWAR, Sept 8: To cope with the shortage of public sector primary schools, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has planned to spend over Rs23.707 billion in the next five years to open and operate community and non-formal schools and literacy centres in the province’s far-off areas, it is learnt.

According to the official documents available with Dawn, Rs4.836 billion of the estimated amount of money will be spent on renting buildings for such schools and literacy centres until financial year 2015-16.

The relevant officials said the government had already established such schools with the cooperation of local communities to educate their children.

They added that teachers in such schools were appointed on contractual basis from among educated people in their respective areas.

Officials said teachers drawing meagre salary were required to provide one of the rooms of their houses to be used as classrooms, and when they couldn’t do so, then the government rented buildings for the purpose.

“Students of different grades study in the same class with a single man teaching them,” an official of the education department said. He said atmosphere in such educational institutions was unfit for studies.

Officials said the estimated cost of salary to be paid to teaching and non-teaching staff in these schools was Rs5.559 billion, while Rs759 million was needed for free textbooks to be distributed among students.

They said the government would spend Rs1.574 billion to purchase furniture and Rs162 million to procure classroom consumables and teaching materials.

Officials said the government had put the cost of ‘unexplained new initiatives’ at Rs10.817 billion.

They said many community schools were established in areas without public sector schools. “Currently, there are 27,207 government schools in the province and they include 17,727 for boys and 9,480 for girls,” said an official quoting the elementary and secondary education department statistics.

He said the government established non-formal and community schools in faraway areas ‘under compulsion’ as it had no other option.

Officials said currently, the government needed to establish 19,093 more primary and 6,014 secondary schools in the province to meet local needs.

They said in light of limited resources and large-scale ravages of terrorist activities, it was next to impossible for the provincial government to build thousands of schools.

Officials said in some cases, there was an urgent need for the establishment of primary schools, so non-formal and community schools were established without consuming much time though construction of new schools took three to four years.

They said sometimes, the government couldn’t set up a school in an area in view of limited number of student available and in such situations, it preferred establishment of non-formal and community schools.

Officials said when the number of students in non-formal schools increased to a desirable level, then the government set up primary schools in the same area.