LAHORE, March 10: Extending its Community Partnership Project, the education department has planned to launch an afternoon programme at the graduate level in government schools and colleges in the province from this year.

This was stated by Community Schools (Monitoring and Evaluation Cell) Director Muhammad Jamil Najam while talking to Dawn, here on Monday.

Starting from intermediate programmes in the community model schools, he said the department had been working to extend it to the graduation level. He added that under this programme, classes would not only be run in the colleges, but also in those schools where the CPP was already doing well.

The introduction of postgraduation programme on the CPP basis, short- and long-term computer courses at the intermediate level and computer education for class VI to X were part of the future endeavours, Mr Jamil added.

The CPP was launched in May 2001, and so far more than 6,000 schools had been established under the project throughout the Punjab. The number of girls community model schools are double the number of boys schools at the primary and elementary level. At secondary level, they are almost equal.

More than 47,000 students are studying in the community model schools. Of them, 70 per cent are girls. A fee of Rs200 to Rs300 a month is being charged from each student.

Around 1,663 computer laboratories have been established in the community schools in April 2002, and 700 of them are functional. Non-government organizations, trusts, public or private companies, partnerships or individuals, are authorized to run these schools.

The government provides them school building, furniture and fixtures, science laboratory, library, free Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education’s affiliation for five years and regular status of afternoon students.

The NGOs or the private parties have to pay utility bills both for the morning and evening classes, contribute 10 per cent of its gross income from the community schools to the Farogh-i-Taleem Fund set up by the government, establish computer laboratories, use different names as community primary, elementary and secondary schools and to organize teacher training courses.

The administration of the NGOs running community model elementary and secondary schools near the railway station and Gulberg told Dawn that they were hardly meeting their expenses. They also complained that the morning session’s administration created problems for them.

According to these organizations, free availability of utilities encouraged the morning staff to misuse them. Besides, they have problems like the migration of the CPP students in regular higher and secondary schools and colleges, non-cooperation of field officers (EDOs and DEOs) and unavailability of financial assistance from the Punjab Education Foundation. No training was provided to their teachers, they grumbled.

They urged the government to waive Rs80,000 security charged from them at the time of registration.

It is learnt that some NGOs have developed differences with the education department on the CPP. Some of them have filed 15 cases with a court against the education department on such issues, an education department official said.