Enrolment of children in school: teachers asked to conduct door-to-door survey

Punjab Chief Minister Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif has ordered the teachers and field staff, working in 4,610 Non-Formal Basic Education Schools, to conduct door-to-door survey at Mohallah and village level throughout Punjab and convince the parents having illiterate children aging from five to nine years to get them enrolled in schools.
This unique survey will be held from August 14 to October 30 this year. Every literacy teacher and his companions including the female staff have been given the target to materialise minimally five additional enrolments during this period. This was disclosed by the Advisor to Punjab Chief Minister on Literacy Rai Haider Ali Kharral on Friday while addressing an orientation workshop in which District Literacy Officers from all over the province participated. Rai Haider Ali said, Pakistan is signatory of UN programme "Education for All" and Millennium Goals Treaty according to which we are bound to upgrade our literacy rate to hundred percent till 2015.
We will have to enrol 0.7 million children every year for the next three years to achieve this Millennium Goal. For this purpose, Punjab Literacy Department has planned to open 1,759 more literacy centers in the rural areas of Punjab and there is no "Ghost School" in the dictionary of PML-N. The Minister revealed that there is a need of 5,000 literacy teachers in each district of Punjab to meet the millennium goal regarding achievement of hundred percent literacy rates.
This requires struggle on war footing by introducing enrolment emergency, he added. Secretary Literacy Punjab Dr Pervaiz Ahmad Khan in his address, disclosed that the department has decided to provide every survey team mobilising the parents for additional enrolment of their children on emergency basis will be provided with enrolment training booklet while survey teams comprising of literacy teachers will also be provided with colourful textbooks meant for nursery students for cost free disbursement at their door step. In this way, the parents will not have to approach any school for having their children enrolled.