LAHORE: The Punjab School Education Department (SED) has decided to appoint permanent heads of 400 primary schools in Lahore.

The SED, under a reconstruction and rehabilitation policy, decided to use resources to build and rehabilitate the primary schools of the city.It directed the chief executive officer (CEO) of the District Education Authority to appoint permanent heads of the 400 primary schools. Under the new policy, a primary school would have at least one head and three teachers.

The department constituted an 11-member committee for rehabilitation of the primary schools. SED Deputy Secretary Dr Kaleem would lead the committee to look after all the rehabilitation process, including construction of new classrooms and washrooms. Other 10 committee members would be from teachers, district officers and the Programme Monitoring and Implementation Unite (PMIU).

The committee, in its recent meeting, decided to make some of the primary schools model schools and it would further submit its report to the department on Jan 15, 2021.

Earlier, the government had also decided to implement rationalisation policy in the schools and transfer and post all the teachers under the policy.

Under the minimum standard of the policy, a male teacher could be posted at a school within 15km from his home while a female within 10km radius.

The additional teachers would have to be transferred to the schools, having shortage of the staff. The department would not transfer senior teachers who would retire within a year or so. The teachers could lodge an online complaint over any problem due to rationalisation policy.

Meanwhile, the Directorate of Public Instruction (SE) directed all district education authorities to send lists of all contract teachers in schools of their respective areas.

There are thousands of contract teachers in the schools of the province. The details of all BEd teachers were called.

The department would take decisions for the regular employment of the teachers and it also sought data of the visiting teachers or those removed from the job.

Published in Dawn, December 28th, 2020