Daily Times

LAHORE: The Punjab government has failed to achieve enrolment target in class five and class eight in year 2015-16.

According to documents available with Daily Times, the School Education Department has sent a letter no 939-M/DCASG – issued by section officer (ER-I) – to the Punjab Education Commission, requesting it to ensure registration of students in grade five and eight for the year 2017 as per the new fixed target, which is 10 percent high from the previous year. However, the data along with the letter revealed that the government could not enrol 42,000 students in class five according to the target in the year 2016-17 in 26 districts of Punjab.

It is pertinent to mention here that the Punjab government has announced several phases of education emergency in the last four years making it mandatory for parents to ensure that their children of age 5-16 receive education. For the purpose, the government earlier had settled down a target to enrol 4.6 million students, but it is still unable to achieve the desired results.

Similarly, the government could not enrol 105,000 students in class eight in 27 district of the province.

The situation is even worse when it comes to provincial capital, Lahore, with 14,124 less enrolment in class eight. Same is the case with other districts where 13,279 enrolments in Faisalabad, 6,783 in Sargodha, 6,232 in Gujranwala, 5,715 in Rawalpindi fell short of target. Talking to Daily Times about the reason for decrease in enrolment drive, Punjab Teachers Union Central Sectary General Kashif Shahzad said that the major reason behind decrease in enrolment drive was that the Punjab government started English medium curriculum at public school at once. Due to implementation of the English curricula, several parents got their children admitted to private schools, he added. He said the government should have implemented English medium curricula gradually, but due to lack of proper planning the government started the curricula from class one to 10 at once. There are some areas where students could not afford English medium school; he said, adding it should be optional for students to join English medium of Urdu medium.