UNICEF to fund ECE in PEF partner schools

Lahore: A meeting of the Program Committee (PC) of Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) was held at PEF head office on Friday with PEF board member Dr. Amjad Saqib in the chair. MD PEF Dr. Aneela Salman, Deputy MD (fin.) Salman A. Malik, concerned PEF program directors and other members of the committee attended the meeting.

The committee reviewed in detail different aspect of the educational interventions of the foundation. The meeting accorded principle approval to the project of setting up of Early Childhood Education (ECE) rooms in its selected partner schools in the Punjab. For this purpose, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has offered to provide Rs. 8 million as financial support to the PEF. This beneficial facility will be used to enroll below five year kids for their education in a child-friendly atmosphere.

MD PEF Dr. Aneela Salman said that ECE would be a milestone initiative of the foundation which would give self-confidence to the budding minds as high quality education, early in life, gives children the best start. She gave a detail of program updates and briefed about holding of annually held quality assurance tests to judge academic standards of partner schools. The meeting was told that MOU between PEF and Cholistan Development Authority has been further extended to June 30, 2016 to continue the facility of free quality education to the students of Cholistan area in Bahawalpur division. MD PEF said that this collaboration is very useful for enhancing girls’ literacy as they have been enjoying the facility of free schooling in their areas. PEF has also arranged teachers’ training to enhance their professional capacity, she added.

The meeting also discussed different aspects of public private partnership based free educational interventions and observed that PEF has helped the low-cost private schools to improve their academic standards by providing them subject specialists under its subject based support program. These subject specialists teach the subjects of English, math and science to their students. Now, the role of these subject specialists is redefined as master trainers to help improve overall standards of the schools supported through this program.