The Advisor to Chief Minister Punjab, Sadia Shehzad Chaudhry has said that proper and effective implementation of chief minister's education sector reforms programme (ESRP) has resulted in restoring the confidence of people in government schools and in increasing enrolment of up to 0.9 million new students.
She was talking to the members of the World Bank delegation in a meeting held to review the social development programme of Punjab government. The participants of the meeting included Executive Directors of World Bank Sid Ahmad Dib (Algeria), CM Vasudev (India), Tom Scholar (UK), Pictro Veglio (Switzerland), Ad Mcklkert (Netherlands), Alternate Executive Directors, Terry O Brien (Australia), Toshio Oya (Japan), Tanvir Ali Agha (Pakistan), Jonge Families, Mexico, Chief Secretary Punjab, Kamran Rasool and secretaries of various departments.
Sadia said that under the leadership of Punjab Chief Minister, Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, the provincial government is committed to reform the education sector, with a view to improve quality, access and governance of education system and sees it as a long term commitment. The government of Punjab highly appreciates the assistance being provided by the World Bank for ESRP and it hopes that bank would consider supporting the programme beyond the current commitment.
Highlighting the significance of ESRP, she observed that this process was initiated by signing of ToP (Terms of Partnership). In the first year, Rs 5,000 million were transferred at the rate of Rs 147 million per district.
It is worth mentioning that out of a total of 117,000 missing facilities of government schools, 38,000 have been bridged in the first year. As regard the stipend schemes, the state of affairs is very promising. Initial target population in this regard was 175,000 but now it is expected that in 5th quarter of stipend distribution, eligible population would be 215,793.
Giving the details regarding aims and objectives of donor co-ordination wing of education department, Sadia said that this wing is playing a pivotal role to maintain effective and consistence co-ordination between education department and international donors and NGOs active in education sector. She added that there is a big gap between education department and international donors as well as NGOs. Overlapping and delicacy in the programme and projects supported by these agencies and NGOs is a great hurdle to achieve the targets/goals set by government of Punjab. This wing is trying to create uniformity in all programmes /projects supported by the donor agencies, she added.