Education is a primary task for any government to provide for its people. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has planned to hand over the operations and management of its low-performing schools to private organizations.
They are of the view that this initiative will be very handful as it will improve the quality. enrollment rates and governance in those educational institutions.
The elementary and secondary education department has selected 180 government schools in nine districts, including 145 primary and 35 high and higher secondary ones, for the pilot project, revealing official documents. It has divided those schools into 35 clusters with each cluster having a high or higher secondary school and four or five ‘feeding’ primary schools.
The initiative will be executed on the basis of public-private partnerships in the selected areas of Abbottabad, Buner, Haripur, Karak, Kohat, Mansehra, Nowshera, Swabi, and Swat districts.
“The low-performing schools are those, where literacy and numeracy rate is below 50 percent compared to the international standard of 80 percent and which do not give optimal results,” adviser to the education department on public-private partnership Ubaidullah. “The government is keen about partnering with the most proficient private institutions, which have a strong footprint in the education sector and are financially sound to facilitate it in carrying out this activity seamlessly as a public-private partnership. It is willing to support private partners in the rehabilitation of schools as per their needs and expectations,” he said.
The survey showed that the majority of students have left school, and an estimated 4.7 million students are out of school in this Province (KPK).
