The Sindh Education Foundation (SEF) should make concerted efforts to enroll 2,50,000 additional children in schools from next academic year. “This may be taken as a target”.
Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah stated this while presiding over a meeting of board of governors (BoG) of the Sindh Education Foundation (SEF) at the CM House on Saturday. The meeting was attended by Additional Chief Secretary (Development) Ajaz Ali Khan, Principal Secretary to CM Alimuddin Bullo Dr Kaiser Bengali, Member SEF-BoG Dr Qazi Masood, Member SEF-BoG Naheed Shah Durrani, Managing Director SEF Alia Shahid, Special Secretary Education and Literacy Department GoS and Ali Hassan Naqvi
SEF Managing Director Naheed Shah Durrani briefed the Board said that the foundation was entering into strategic partnership with a number of credible and reputable organisations including, The Citizen Foundation, Indus Resource Centre, Sindh Madrassa Board, M/S Aware, Indus Education Foundation, OSAR Education, Tehzeeb Foundation, Green Crescent Trust, BRAC Pakistan and Education Fund for Sindh for pooling of resources, learning and exchanges and implementation of its projects. These partnerships will benefit marginalised and vulnerable children of the province.
The chairman and the BoG appreciated the SEF’s initiative of strategic partnerships with credible organisations. The chief minister remarked that through collective efforts and input the state of education in the province could be significantly improved. The SEF MD said that the SEF had already set a target to bring back out-of-school children and the foundation aspired to register around 250,000 additional children in schools by the beginning of next academic year (2016-17). She added that quality for the SEF was a non-negotiable agenda and it would not be compromised in pursuance of increasing enrolment.
Briefing the members about various programmes of the Foundation, Ms Durrani stated that according to different survey reports there were around 2.5 million adolescents in Sindh who might not have dropped out of school or never had been to school. These adolescent children, especially the vulnerable children (street children, bonded labour etc) aged somewhere from 9 to 18 years require combined accelerated learning and skill development programmes. The SEF proposed to launch an adult and adolescent learning programme for this segment of society which the chief minister as chairman of the SEF board approved.
Presently, the SEF is exploring options of partnerships with some reputable organisations already working with the vulnerable segments of the society. Ms Durrani shared a list of potential partners in this regard.
Durrani further told the forum that Sindh, like other provinces, faced huge vacuum in post-primary education as participation rate in post-primary education was alarmingly low in Sindh. In order to tackle this challenging situation, the SEF proposes to embark on a programme to establish middle and high schools through partnership with private school operators. Proposal includes plan to target those districts where participation in post-primary education is quite low comparatively.
BoG Chairman Syed Qaim Ali Shah appreciated the SEF for paying special attention to the critical areas in education in Sindh and assured his full support to the Foundation.
He directed the relevant departments to support the SEF to meet its targets aiming at high quality service delivery. In his closing comments, the chief minister said that the present provincial government was fully committed to make quality education accessible to all the children of the province.