1,000 new schools to enrol 200,000 students in Sindh

4m children are believed to be out of school in the province

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has approved a proposal to establish 1,000 new schools under public-private partnership arrangement to enrol 200,000 out-of-school children in the province.

The semi-autonomous Sindh Education Foundation (SEF), which is primarily responsible for supporting the non-governmental and charitable organisations to spread education, has been tasked with establishing the new schools in the province.

Sindh CM approved the proposal to this effect while chairing the meeting of board of governors of SEF.

Out-of-school children is a major issue in Sindh as their numbers are estimated to be around four million. The CM said that enrolling out-of-school children was the foremost priority of his government. “If coronavirus-related restrictions don’t get in our way, we are expected to build these schools by next year,” said SEF Managing-Director Abdul Kabir Kazi.

He said that a budget of Rs2.5 billion was expected to be spent to build these schools.

Tenders complete

He said that the schools would be established all over the province especially in the districts where the educational institutions had been in less than the required number.

He said the tendering process had been completed to select the partner private sector organisations to establish these schools.

At present, the SEF has been running 1,870 schools all over the province having the enrolment of around 4,75,000 students. Out of these schools, 70 have been working as the non-formal education centres to impart vocational training to the children.

The SEF has been running this network of schools with an annual budget of Rs4.5 billion that is going to be increased by Rs1 billion.