PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa cabinet on Monday made a landmark decision to introduce coeducation at primary level in the province and declared that only women teachers would be appointed to primary schools in future.

“The government will establish schools where boys and girls can study together,” said adviser to the chief minister on information Mushtaq Ghani while giving details to the media about the cabinet’s meeting here.

Chief Minister Pervez Khattak chaired the meeting.

Mr. Ghani said the cabinet agreed with the proposal of the elementary and secondary education department to start co-education at the primary level.

He said new primary schools would be established in different areas, where girls and boys would be educated together. The coeducation system would be introduced in the current year, he added.

The CM’s adviser said the survey conducted in 2015-16 showed that 27 per cent girls went to the boys’ schools, while five per cent boys attended classes in the girls’ schools at the primary level.

“The coeducation system already exists at the primary level,” he said.

Mr. Ghani said another major decision of the cabinet was that women teachers would be appointed to primary schools for boys and girls.

He said the policy would be implemented gradually and that male teachers would be replaced with female ones in future.

“The study shows that women teachers perform better than men,” he said, adding that only women would be appointed to primary schools in future.

The CM’s adviser said the cabinet granted approval to the five years education sector plan (2015-20) for the promotion of primary and elementary education in the province.

He said under the plan, 100 per cent enrolment in primary schools would be carried out by 2022-23, which was presently 88 per cent at the preparatory level.

Mr. Ghani said the estimated cost of the plan was Rs592 billion.

He said under the plan, 50,248 teachers would be recruited in the next four years.

The CM’s adviser said more than 100,000 in-service teachers would be trained, while students from class 6 to class 10 would be given scholarships.

He said the cabinet also discussed arrangements for population census scheduled to begin on March 15.

The census commissioner briefed the cabinet about the upcoming exercise and KP has been divided into 22,000 blocks.

Mr. Ghani said the cabinet had some reservations about the population census process and that Chief Minister Pervez Khattak would discuss them with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

He said the census data from across the country would be shifted to Islamabad for counting and that a representative of the province would be present during the process.

The CM’s adviser said the cabinet approved the ‘aerial reforestation’ in different parts of the province.

He said 15 tons seeds would be dropped from helicopters during the spring tree plantation campaign beginning on Feb 10.

“The aerial reforestation is part of the PTI government’s signature ‘Billion Trees Tsunami’ project under which one billion trees will be planted by the end of 2018,” he said.

Mr. Ghani said 500 million saplings had been planted so far and the rest would be planted during the stipulated period.

He said 200 million additional trees would also be planted.

The cabinet also ordered necessary amendments to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Forest Development Fund (Management and Utilisation) Rules 2006 and decided the unfreezing of 30 per cent of special allowance of the secretariat employees frozen by the finance division in June 2016.

Published in Dawn, February 7th, 2017