LAHORE, July 31: The City District Government’s Shalamar Town Nazim (UC-34) Chaudhry Abdul Jabbar on Tuesday presented a gold medal to Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) managing director Dr Allah Bakhsh Malik for offering quality education facilities to underprivileged children in North Lahore.

Speaking at a ceremony at a local hotel, Mr Jabbar said there were a number of families in North Lahore who could not even afford clothes and regular meals for their children and what to say about sending them to school.

He said the PEF under the leadership of Dr Malik helped the under privileged children seek quality education.

Dr Malik said the foundation had launched the Education Voucher Scheme (EVS) and Foundation Assistant Schools (FAS) programmes to ensure that poor and underprivileged children could seek quality education in selected private schools.

In view of the demands from partner private schools, Dr Malik said the foundation would soon enhance the education vouchers from the existing 5,000 to 10,000. Under the EVS, he said, the PEF selected underprivileged children and provided them vouchers to seek admission to any of the partner private schools in the locality. The partner schools charge Rs300 against each voucher from the PEF.

Dr Malik said the PEF was currently educating over 50,000 students in 750 private schools in 15 districts.

He said the foundation was also focusing on continuous professional development and capacity building of teachers.

The foundation had so far trained 45,000 teachers through cluster-based trainings and school leadership development programme, he added.