Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) has so far failed to comply with the directives of the Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) to streamline the education system to improve the quality and standard in public sector educational institutions.

According to documents available with Daily Times, in a meeting held in April under the chairmanship of CADD Minister Tariq Fazal Chaudhry, the authorities decided more than a dozen agenda items and forwarded them to the FDE for implementation within the directorate and all its educational institutions. The FDE is the entity that oversees 422 educational institutions across the capital, including 20 model colleges.

However, despite passage of the deadlines given by the CADD, the directorate is yet to implement all of the agenda items.

In the meeting, held to implement the Prime Minister’s Education Reforms Programme (PMERP) initiatives, the director of model colleges and area education officers (AEOs) of the FDE had been assigned the task of compiling annual school census for record purpose. The authorities concerned had been told to attach the hardcopy of the report, signed by the school heads concerned by April 28.

The ministry also issued directives for compiling the monitoring reports having a column for AEOs remarks or action taken. For this agenda, the FDE had been asked to submit a compliance report by the second week of May.

The FDE was also directed to prepare a staff rationalisation or workload policy by May 2. Besides this, the complete list of teaching and non-teaching staff as well as the daily wagers serving at FDE’s educational institutions was also sought by May 2.

Another important decision of the meeting was to prepare a report regarding lifting the boundary walls of the schools. Interestingly, the FDE DG was declared the responsible official who “would be accountable before the CADD”.

All AEOs had been asked to submit the recommendations on under-performing schools to the CADD adviser by May 2.

As per the plan, the Ministry of Information Technology through Model Colleges Director Dr Tariq Masood would be requested to provide assistance for provision of computer labs in all remaining schools under the USF funds. The last date was April 11 for this agenda.

Moreover, it was also decided to issue notifications for moving the monitoring teams under the AEOs, assigning model setup institutions under the AEOs and making assistant principals the acting principals in schools where AEOs had the additional charge. A notification for the restructuring of the FDE was also suppose to be issued.

Sources privy to the developments disclosed that so far the authorities concerned had not complied with most of the declared agendas in the above said meeting. They said that the authorities were intentionally delaying the matter. “Actually the authorities are not serious about implementing the plans,” a source added.

When contacted for his comments, FDE Director General (DG) Hasnaat Qureshi said that he had recently assumed the charge, so the coordinator of the Prime Minister’s Education Reforms Programme (PMERP), Ali Raza, might be in a better position to brief the media regarding the matter.

When contacted, Ali Raza said that the annual schools census was almost complete, and that the few remaining schools would be covered soon. “We are following the Punjab education monitoring model, and it may take a little time, as the services in this regard are being availed on a voluntary basis from the government of Punjab.”

When asked for the copy of the work done, Raza refused to share the documents saying, “The FDE can provide the copies of the documents.”