Sindh Minister Announces To Start School Enrollment Drive From August 16

KARACHI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th Aug, 2024) Sindh Education Minister Syed Sardar Ali Shah on Monday, announced to start the school enrollment drive from August 16, 2024 with an expanded target of enrolling more than 0.8 million children in the schools across the province.

The minister, while addressing the launch ceremony of ‘Sindh Enrollment and Retention Drive 2024-25’ organized by Sindh Education Department, vowed to utilize all available resources to make the process effective and also expressed hope that the opening of 7,000 Viable schools and adoption of community participation approach will increase the enrollment ratio.

Recruitment of teachers in Sindh has helped meeting the shortage of teachers and over 7000 schools have been opened and made functional, he informed adding that target of enrolling 0.8 to 0.9 million children in government schools this year will increase the number from 5.2 million to nearly 6 million in the province.

The provincial minister pointed out that 5.2 million children were currently enrolled in government schools in Sindh, 4 million in private schools, 0.927 million in Sindh Education Foundation schools and 57000 children were enrolled in non-formal education.

Stressing on community participation to make the school enrollment system more effective, he said that provision of free education to children aged between of 5 to 16 years was responsibility of the state as per the constitution but lack of resources and other challenges required social cooperation.

The education minister said that the school headmaster’s duties will not be limited only to running the school but it will also include community participation especially from the enrollment of children to the continuation of the educational process in collaboration with parents.

He said that the school administration would also be entrusted with the responsibility of planting trees in schools and the process of planting trees in schools will also be included in the performance evaluation of the headmaster.

The Secretary School Education Sindh Zahid Ali Abbasi, UNICEF Pakistan representative Abdullah Fadal, Chief Field Officer UNICEF Prem Bahadur Chand, Director Operations NCHD Humira Hashmi, Chief Program Manager RSU Dr. Junaid Samoon, District officers of the Education Department and others participated in the event.

On this occasion, representatives of UNICEF, JICA and other partner organizations also expressed their views and presented their suggestions. Various proposals were presented regarding maintaining enrollment in schools in Sindh and increasing the numbers.

Later, the education minister inspected the scientific models exhibited by the students of various government schools and appreciated the performance of the students.