LAHORE:School Education Minister Rana Mashhood Ahmad Khan has announced a three-month-long exam emergency across the province in a hope to get better results.
Under the exam emergency, students will be given additional lectures to enhance their performance in examinations.
In this connection, addressing a press conference at the Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board on Saturday. Rana Mashhood briefed media about different educational reforms introduced by the Punjab government to improve quality of education as well as to extend education to the children of impecunious strata.
He reiterated, “Provision of education to all is our strong commitment and no child will be deprived of his basic right. This will enlighten every house with knowledge and the whole country will benefit of our policies.”
The minister said that a complaint cell was being set up in Punjab to solve the issues of the people pertaining to School Education Department. “Similarly, the educational models of Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and other countries would be studied to raise the standard of education at par with international level.
He vowed that teachers would be given a respectable position in the society. “Our teachers are agents of change. Besides upgradation of teachers’ scales, a teachers’ foundation would also be established to help them in different matters, including provision of soft loans.
Mashhood said that a comprehensive programme for improvement of schools had been launched with a total outlay of Rs 50 billion. “Under the programme, construction of 36,000 new classrooms and provision of missing facilities, besides restoration of dilapidated school buildings would be done by 2018,” he said.
“It is good to know that the total ratio of provision of missing school facilities, including boundary walls, toilets, electricity, clean drinking water and classroom furniture, has increased from 69 percent to 95 percent. Around Rs 30 billion has been spent on the provision of these facilities,” he said, adding that every five to nine-year-old child will be in school by 2018.
He went on to say that qualified teachers would be provided in 10,000 primary schools by March 2018. He said that pre nursery classes would be started soon to ensure 100 percent enrolment and to decrease dropout. “On the other side, students would be provided one time balanced meal in their schools in four selected districts of southern Punjab under School Feeding Programme. The government has also increased monthly stipend of girls from Rs 200 to Rs 1,000 enrolled in secondary levels schools in 11 southern Punjab districts to encourage girls’ education in these backward areas. A total of 400,000 girls will benefit from this programme.”
Mashhood said that Punjab was the only province where students were being taught on tablet computers. “Under the smart digital boards project, tablets have been provided in multimedia classrooms and it is hoped that these gadgets will help students improve their intellectual ken.
“Tablets and smart boards are being provided to 2,000 schools under this pilot project. He said that the government had eliminated child labour form brick kilns and children of brick kiln families were being provided with stipends to continue their education.
He expressed satisfaction over what he described as improved students’ attendance ratio to 90 percent and teachers’ attendance to 93 percent. Similarly, he said tours ratio of school monitoring staff had been increased to 96 percent.
