Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) is the largest public-sector program of providing free schooling facilities to as much as 1.9 million most-needy students in the province.

Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) is the largest public-sector program of providing free schooling facilities to as much as 1.9 million most-needy students in the province. It is sanguine to note that 45 percent of them are girls. This foundation has also strengthened the low-cost private schools through its public private partnership based programs. It has been observed that PEF sponsored free schooling facilities are a great boon for the low-income families as they cannot afford schooling expenses of their children.

MD PEF Tariq Mahmood said this while presiding over weekly coordination meeting at his office on Wednesday. PEF program directors and other officers attended the meeting. The meeting reviewed pace of expansion of public private partnership based initiatives for the disfranchised communities.

MD PEF observed that transparency and merit-based policies are two conspicuous features of the foundation. While discussing programs’ ongoing expansions, he made it clear that any attempt for partnership through fake school registration certificates will not be tolerated.

While PEF is working hard to timely pay monthly dues to the school partners, school heads should ensure that their students’ record in the PEF server remains most updated. They should also maintain an updated record of teachers in addition to keeping parents’ updated details, he said.

The meeting maintained that provision of suitable salary to school-teachers is encouraged and proposed that teachers’ pay should also be mentioned in partnership agreements in future. The meeting noted that only those partner school teachers should be offered free capacity building trainings whose data is maintained in Teachers Information System (TIS) of the foundation.

The meeting was further told that government employees are ineligible for any partnership with the foundation and therefore, such partners are already offered to transfer school’s partnership to a non-governmental blood relative. The meeting proposed that nearby private schools should be offered partnership to help the students to continue their free education if any such person fails to benefit from this facility.

The meeting expressed the satisfaction over timely distribution of 7.1 million textbooks in partner schools across the province.

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