Sindh Education Foundation (SEF), Govt. of Sindh officially launched a program recently to establish middle and high schools in the province in a bid with an overall objective to gradually to bridge the upsettingly huge gap between primary and post-primary education in the province.
Under the banner of the SEF Middle and High School (SMHS) Program, with the support of Sindh Government’s Education & Literacy Department, the Foundation has finalized selection of approximately 60 School Operators for establishment of around 125 Middle/High schools in Sindh. These schools are planned to be set up in areas where there are no post-primary schools.
With financial and technical support extended to these post-primary schools, SEF would accomplish enrollment of 30,000 students in Phase I, making a small breakthrough. The overall target assigned to the Foundation under this program is to reach out to estimated 200,000 students in the coming 05 years.
SEF, which is a semi-autonomous body working under a Board of Governors headed by the Chief Minister Sindh and with Senior Minister for Education and Literacy Department as its vice chairman, would provide financial and technical support for establishment and management of middle and high schools.
According to the SEMIS Data of the year 2014-15, 90% of the public schools in the province are primary, leaving perturbing 10% of all three types of schools combined, i.e. Middle/Elementary, Secondary and Higher Secondary. According to the data, 42,342 schools are primary, 2,336 are middle/elementary, 1,752 are secondary and only 294 are higher secondary. One of the reasons behind the huge dropout ratio to post-primary education in the province, as evident from the numbers mentioned above, is lack of primary schools.
Addressing the gathering, SEF Managing Director, Naheed S. Durrani said, “We want to change the perspective and approach towards education in the province. We want to support establishment of schools that can empower the students.”
“It’s time we provide students with the quality schooling which is aligned with modern methods of teaching and learning supplemented by ICT,” she added.
The session was attended by two members of the SEF BoG, who have recently joined the board namely Nazir A. Tunio and Husnain Qamar Shah. Both the members are presently involved in multifaceted activities relating to education in Sindh.
Operators have been selected after a comprehensive, transparent, and merit-based process from scrutiny of applications and to selection of successful operators. This involved an exhaustive to physical verification of proposed sites and, finally, selection of applicants – the entire process lasted for six months, from January to June 2016. The selected operators were oriented on the philosophy of the program, quality-check mechanisms and legal bindings of the contract being made under the program.