PESHAWAR: The Elementary Education Foundation, an autonomous government organisation, has extended the provincial government’s voucher scheme from eight districts to the entire province to financially support the education of out-of-school children in private schools.

With the scheme covering the entire province, the EEF has set the target of enrolling 90,000 more out-of-school children in the private schools in the areas, where there are no public sector schools, EEF managing director Zulfiqar Ahmad told Dawn.

He said currently, 41,000 students got education in the privately-owned educational institutions in eight districts of the province under the voucher scheme.

EEF initiative meant to enrol 90,000 more children in private schools across KP

“The scheme has been extended to the entire province in the current academic year,” he said.

Earlier, the scheme was implemented in six districts only, including Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan, Kohat, Mansehra, Mardan and Swat.

The provincial government has been supporting the poor out-of-school children under the Iqra Faroghe Taleem Voucher Scheme since April 2015.

Under the scheme, the government has taken the responsibility of enrolling the out-of-school children in private schools in the areas without government schools within 1.5 kilometers.

The voucher scheme was launched to help the poor parents, who don’t have access to government schools and are too poor to enrol themselves in private schools and thus, remaining without formal education.

Under the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Free Compulsory Primary and Secondary Education Act, 2017, binds the government to provide free and compulsory education to the children up to 16 years of age.

The law was passed in April 2017 to implement Article 25-A of the Constitution, which says, “the state shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to sixteen years in such manner as may be determined by law.”

However, a recent survey of the education department reveals that over 1.8 million children are out of school.

“The EEF has extended the voucher scheme to the rest of the province. A contract has been given to the Bureau of Statistics for identification of the out-of-school children in the province,” Mr Zulfiqar told Dawn.

He said the officials of the Bureau of Statistics located the out-of-school children and informed the EEF about them.

“Until now, the bureau has found 48,000 children, who are out of school,” he said.

The EEF managing director said the foundation had provided vouchers to all recently-identified out-of-school children, while the identification of other children not going to schools were under way.

“We later verify such children,” he said.

Mr Zulfiqar said the government had allocated Rs700 million for the voucher scheme in the current academic year.

Under the scheme, the EFF pays Rs500 to the private schools through vouchers as tuition fee for primary students each, Rs600 for the students of grades VI-VIII and Rs800 for ninth and 10th graders.

In addition, the students get Rs2,500 each to purchase uniform and free books and stationary.

Published in Dawn, May 13th, 2018