Daily Times

PESHAWAR: The trust and confidence of the parents reached to high points as many as 151000 students of private schools migrated to government run schools, the officials of the education department statement claimed.

According to a press release issued by the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa education department on Monday stated that large number of students compare to previous year moved to government schools.

The statement claimed that during the four education friendly policy of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) parents have trying to admit their children into government schools.

This year, a record 151,000 students have migrated from private schools of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the Government Schools. This number was 34,000 last year. This significant increase is testimony of reforms initiatives in government schools, some of which have never been done in the private sector.

Government schools of KP have now more than 1100 interactive white boards and more than 1340 state of the Art Computer Labs. Above all, Government schools are free and provide free books to the students.

Its stated that besides other books, this year the Government distributed more than 5.3 million drawing books among the students.

According to the numbers available at the KP Directorate of Elementary & Secondary Education, of total 151,610 students who migrated to government schools are 100,937 boys and 50,673 girls’ students.

In terms of high migration districts Haripur is leading with 16684 students followed by DI Khan 12986 and Mardan with 11,324 students which show that education reforms are equally resulting in improvements all across the province.

The provincial government has made tremendous efforts in the education sector which has improved parents perception about the government schools across the province.

Around 96% of parents, as per the statement have voluntarily moved their children from private schools to government schools, stated that they would send their next child to government school as well.

Primary reasons for this shift is free of cost education, free books, innovation through state-of-the art Labs, White Boards and provision of basic facilities such as clean drinking water, boundary walls, group latrines, solar panels, and electricity. Provision of boundary walls and latrines also increases female enrolment in schools.

Last year, around 34,000 students who were previously attending private schools left private schools and joined government schools between September 2015 and March 2016.

This is according to a survey in May 2016, which revealed that almost 66% of these parents took out their children from private schools of their own accord. The key reasons were ever rising education related expenses in private schools, while government schools are now viewed as offering good quality teaching that too is free of cost.

The provincial government is increasing education budget to a record 139 Billion for FY 2017-18. This increase in budget will help in furthering the quality of education and provision of basic facilities to the schools.

It is hoped that KP public sector education will soon become an example for other provinces.