Islamabad: The National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) on Thursday signed an agreement with UNICEF (The United Nations Children’s Fund) to carry out a feasibility study on the requirement of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Education Improvement Programme.
The agreement signing ceremony was held at the NCHD head office.
NCHD chairman Colonel (r) Amirullah Marwat and Unicef education adviser Syed Fawad Ali Shah signed the agreement in the presence of the relevant officials.
The NCHD Chairman said the study would help determine the potentiality of location for a specific sub-component or as a package approach to implement all components related to SDG 4′ and identify pockets with a high number of out-of-school children in 20 districts of KP.
He said despite significant progress in the education sector over the year, many youth and adults lacked basic reading and writing skills.
The chairman said the COVID-19 pandemic had forced many countries to either suspend adult education programs or shift their focus to more pressing issues such as health awareness and services for disadvantaged families.
“The discontinuity in learning has increased the probability of the rise in dropout rates as well,” he said.
The chairman called for the designing of ‘high-impact and effective literacy and education programmes for youth and adults under the current circumstances.
NCHD Director-General Hassan Baig said his organisation was committed to enhancing and improving the literacy rate in the country through the Adult Literacy Programme for mothers and Universal Primary Education through feeder schools in remote areas.
He said 100 seminary feeder schools were functional in Punjab, Sindh, KP, and Balochistan with 2,411 students enrolled for contemporary and religious education.
“We recently launched a project to set up 3,000 literacy centres targeting 75,000 students nationwide with the help of Pakistan Human Development Fund,” he said.
The DG said the NCHD would mobilise all BISP beneficiaries for enrolment.
The Unicef Representative appreciated the efforts of the NCHD in the field of Education, especially Non-Formal Education for those, who never went to school or dropped out.
