Punjab government decided to recruit about 11,000 graduate and post-graduate teachers on contract in every district of the province.
Sources in the Education Department told Business Recorder, here on Friday that the government was also planning to launch a project of 'Education Town' for the welfare of teachers. This would be a joint project involving public and private sector in which housing units will be given to teachers on soft loan and down payment.
According to the sources, special post of Executive District Officer (EDO) College would be created soon by abolishing the post of EDO secondary education.
The sources claimed that due positive steps initiated by the provincial government, the record number of 1.7 million students was registered in schools across the province last year and it had been acknowledged a landmark achievement by the donor organisations.
An amount of Rs 54 billion will be spent for further increasing enrolment, literacy and up-gradation of education standard in next three years under Literate Punjab programme of Chief Minister Punjab, the sources said.
They further said that the provincial government had already released Rs 150 million to each district of the province to provide water, electricity and furniture in 40,000 schools. In order to promote sports in the province, 2 per cent quota has been reserved for sportsmen in colleges and university and better playing facilities like playing grounds and equipment were being provided in colleges, the sources said.
In the public sector education system, the sources said that the provincial government targeted the low enrolment, high dropout rates, low literacy levels especially amongst females, poor student - teacher ratios at the level of elementary education.
Under the Punjab Education Sector Reform Programme, the government broke away from the traditional mode of incremental investments in the education sector.
The sources further said that the 725,000 students from class Katchi to class-V in the government schools of the Punjab were delivered free text books at a total cost of Rs 600 million. In order to check the drop out rate of girls in middle school, Rs 200 per month per girl is being given as stipend in 15 low literacy districts.
The Education Sector Reform Programme (ESRP) launched during 2003-04 with the assistance of World Bank, focused on provision of free text books to primary school students, stipends to girl students of classes VI to VII in 13 backward districts, training of teachers, education awareness campaign and provision of missing facilities.
For special education the government is attaching top priority.