Chairman Board of Governors of Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) Raja Muhammad Anwar has said that the foundation has approved a budget of Rs 4 billion for the financial year 2009-2010 against the Rs 3 billion for the current financial year. He expressed these views in a meeting of the Board of Governors of the PEF.
He said that the board expressed its satisfaction that the foundation utilised its 95 per cent budget for the cause of expanding quality education in slums and rural areas in selected districts. The Punjab Education Foundation's board of governors had decided to expand its two programmes -Foundation Assisted Schools (FAS) and New School Programme (NSP) - across the province and another Education Voucher Scheme (EVS) to two more districts.
At present, the FAS were being run in 18 districts, NSP in five tehsils and EVS in slums and katchi bastis in Lahore alone. The approval for the expansion of PEF's all three programmes was granted in the meeting. The expansion in public-private partnership programmes would help bring more private sector schools in foundation's fold and offer quality education to children belonging to less privileged families.
Anwar said the New School Programme would encourage private sector to open new schools in rural areas, where no registered or public sector school was available within two kilometres' radius. Currently, 48 new schools are operating in five tehsils - Dunyapur, Jatoi, Chiniot, Khairpur Tamewali and Rojhan. One of these schools had been failed in foundation's quality assurance test.
The new schools will be allowed to take 50 students initially and raise its enrolment up to 250. The foundation would conduct oral test of the students of new schools after six months and written test after a year.
Anwar said the BoG also approved to expand its Education Voucher Scheme (EVS) in Kasur and Okara districts. He said the foundation would now offer 20,000 vouchers to children belonging to poor families living in slums and rural areas in all the three districts including Lahore.
In a major policy shift, the BoG decided that the foundation would conduct Quality Assurance Tests in its funded schools from Class-I instead of Class-III. In order to make this decision realistic; the BoG approved that its schools could also enrol a maximum of 50 students in prep and nursery classes.
On the basis of Quality Assurance Tests, the foundation has rejected assistance to 27 schools that failed twice. The board rejected the appeals of these schools' management for the third chance. Following the selection of new schools in Phase-V of FAS programme, the foundation had received 750 appeals from applicants. In order to hear and rectify objections, the BoG constituted an appellate committee having two members from the BoG.
He said the BoG also agreed that prizes would be awarded to the top ranking schools as well as students. Answering a question, Anwar said the foundation was planning to re-advertise the post of managing director of the foundation. He said the foundation wanted to bring foundation's MD from the corporate sector having experience of management as well as education. He said the board would also consider offering better pay package to the new MD.
Answering another question, the BoG chairman said the board did not approve the re-appointment of retired officials following Punjab government's clear-cut policy in this regard. He said the foundation was also issuing advertisements for the appointments against vacant posts. The BoG chairman said the monitoring and evaluation reports by the third parties showed that the foundation schools' standard stood higher than the public sector schools.-PR
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