PESHAWAR: Speakers at a pre-budget seminar on girls’ have urged the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to keep education sector atop of its priorities in upcoming financial year 2023-24.
The seminar was organized by Blue Veins, a non-governmental organization, in collaboration with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Commission on the Status of Women (KPCSW) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Child Protection and Welfare Commission.
The objective of the seminar was to engage all governmental and non-governmental stakeholders to expand their agendas for girl’s education and gather inputs and demands regarding education financing priorities.
Addressing the participants of the seminar, Director (Programme) KPCSW, Amina Durrani said that devastated floods in Khyber have had a significant impact on public sectors including education while the socio-economic and political crises have further aggravate the situation and caused widespread challenges to many areas with an additional burden on education.
She said that the state of girls’ education in KP is dismal as out of 4.7 million out of school children around 66 percent are girls.
Furthermore, she said that the drop-out ratio is also higher in girls and 23 percent of girls even cannot reach to the level of 10 grade (Secondary School Certificate) due to different reasons including lack of schools in their respective area, lack of basic facilities in schools and early marriages etc.
She said, we cannot achieve any Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) unless we prioritise the important sector of education, especially girls’ education.
In his speech, Programme Manager Blue Veins, Qamar Naseem said around 15 percent of girls in KP become mothers by delivering birth to their first child before the age of 18 years. He pinpointed early marriages a big hurdle in promotion of girls’ education.
He suggested for adoption of Public-Private model adopted in Sindh province for providing opportunities to maximum number of girls in getting education.
Sher Azam Khan, Chief Planning Officer Elementary and Secondary Education KP apprised participants that the provincial government has maximum focus on girls’ education and since last four years all new schools have been established with the ratio of 30:70, 30 percent boys and 70 percent girls’ schools.
In KP, he continued, there are around 34780 number of schools out of which 20447 are for girls and 14333 for boys. He said that last year, the provincial government had have allocated 17 percent of the total budget of Rs.1332 billion for education sector.
Similarly, Senior Planning Officer at Elementary and Secondary Education, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Shahab Uallah was of the opinion that gender parity is a challenging task in education sector, but despite all such challenges the department is fully focusing on promotion of girls’ education.
In the outgoing fiscal year, he said that the department had so far received 20.4 billion developmental allocations, which has been utilized with ratio of 70 percent (Rs. 14.2 billion) for girls’ education and 30 percent 6.12 for boys.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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