K-P education minister at the stone laying ceremony of a local school in Peshawar. PHOTO: ABDUL GHAFFAR BAIG/EXPRESS

PESHAWAR: In a bid to improve the education standards in the province, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Minister for Elementary and Secondary Education Atif Khan has said that the government is hoping to ensure equal literacy rates of both boys and girls.



He said this while laying the foundation stone for the Begum Shahabuddin Higher Secondary School in Peshawar on Wednesday.



Blaming the previous provincial governments for nothing for improving girls education in the province, he held that lack of attention as the primary reason for girls education lagging behind to boys education. However, he assured that the Pakistan-Tehreek-e-Insaf government had prioritised girls education.



He added that the government had decided to standardise education at 402 higher secondary schools across the province. For this purpose, he said that the Department for International Development (DFID) of UK would provide financial support for 200 schools. The remaining 202 schools would be standardised using funds from the government kitty.



Atif said that they expect to complete the project by March 2018. Elaborating details of the project, he said that they would provide every basic facility in these schools.



Talking about the poor performance of public schools in the recently announced Secondary School Certificates (SSC) examinations, the minister said that a lot of people and the media had criticised the results but they were not aware of the actual situation.



He said that previously, private school examination halls were ‘bought’ where students were allowed to cheat during exams. However, this year the situation was markedly different after the education department introduced stringent measures to eliminate the trend of cheating during exams.



“We installed CCTV cameras in halls while appointing one invigilator for 25 students as opposed to the past practice of hiring one invigilator to monitor 50 students with an interruption from politicians and owners of private schools,” he claimed.



The minister added that the incumbent government had sought to take action against these unlawful practices to eliminate the trend of cheating in exams.



Despite the stringent measures, Atif said that government school students managed to secure high marks while the overall SSC results were far better when compared to private schools.



The education minister had called an emergency meeting of all the SSC boards in the province earlier this week. During the meeting, they decided to issue show cause notices to 174 government-run schools in the province.



Published in The Express Tribune, July 13th, 2017.