A meeting of the Programme Committee of the Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) was held at the foundation's head office on Friday with its board member under the chairmanship of Dr Amjad Saqib. Those also attending the meeting were PEF Managing Director Dr Aneela Salman, Finance Deputy Managing Director Salman Malik, concerned foundation programme directors and other committee members.
The committee reviewed in detail different aspect of the educational interventions of the foundation. The meeting accorded principle approval to the project of setting up of an Early Childhood Education (ECE) rooms in its selected partner schools in the Punjab. The United Nations Children's Fund has offered to provide Rs 8 million to support the foundation. This beneficial facility will be used to enroll below five year kids for their education in a child-friendly atmosphere.
Dr Salman said the ECE would be a milestone initiative of the foundation which would give self-confidence to the budding minds as high quality education, early in life, gives children the best start. She gave a detail of programme updates and briefed about holding of annually held quality assurance tests to judge academic standards of partner schools.
The meeting was told that a memorandum of understanding between the foundation and Cholistan Development Authority has been further extended to June 30, 2016 to continue the facility of free quality education to the students of Cholistan area in Bahawalpur division. The PEF MD said, "This collaboration is useful to enhance girls' literacy as they have been enjoying the facility of free schooling in their areas. PEF has also arranged teachers' training to enhance their professional capacity."
The meeting also discussed different aspects of public private partnership based free educational interventions and said the PEF had helped the low-cost private schools to improve their academic standards by providing them subject specialists under its subject based support programme.