By Zaynab Hasan | Volunteer and Admin Coordinator
In 2016, The Citizens Foundation (TCF) embarked on an ambitious new Government Schools Programme – a public-private partnership model through which TCF assumed responsibility for the management of government schools across the country in order to improve enrolment and quality of education.
TCF has currently taken on the management of a total of 259 government schools from three provinces:
- 252 in Punjab
- 5 in Khyber Pakhtoon Kwa; and
- 2 in Sindh
Why has TCF taken on this additional responsibility?
The majority of government schools in Pakistan are in such a dilapidated state that they infringe on the ability for students to learn.
According to the 2005 National Census, 40% of public schools have no bathrooms, 56% have no electricity, 32% have no access to clean drinking water, 38% have no boundary walls, and 7% have no building.
Girls especially have trouble accessing schools – not only due to distance travelling to school but also due to cultural and financial reasons.
Aside from this, children are routinely subjected to corporal punishment and teacher absenteeism is rampant with an average of just 3 teachers per government school.
What TCF has achieved so far:
To improve quality of teaching standards, thousands of competent teachers and principals have been inducted, all of whom have gone through a comprehensive training programme aimed at enhancing their pedagogical skills. These teachers now have access to TCF's internally developed textbooks as reference material to aid instruction.
It has been more than a decade since the first batch of students graduated from TCF. The total number of our graduates stands at 15,966 today. The next decade will see a substantive increase not just in the number of TCF graduates but also in their academic standing and their capacity to serve as agents of positive change, in line with TCF's vision.
Support us!
With our expanding Government Schools Venture venture, now more than ever we are calling on YOUR support to help us impart education on Pakistan's 24 million out of school children. Help us ensure that every child, regardless of class, religion, gender or economic standing has access to a quality education.
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