PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly’s Standing Committee on Elementary and Secondary Education has recommended to the government to reopen 1,500 defunct Maktab schools in the province.

The committee met here on Friday with ANP parliamentary leader Sardar Hussain Babak, who is the body’s chairman, presided over the meeting.

On the occasion, Mr Babak said the previous PTI government had unwisely closed 1,500 Maktab schools across the province, and suggested their reopening. He said the education department should continue teachers training programme on priority basis.

Maktab schools were run in local mosques and each school was provided with one teacher. Officials said most of Maktab schools did not exist and teachers were drawing salaries without performing their duties. They said the government had closed these schools due to lack of transparency.

Mr Babak said the government did not allocate funds in the ongoing budget for establishing new schools. He said consequences of the decisions made behind the closed doors and “new experiments” would harm the education sector in the province.

He asked the department concerned to take all stakeholders, including the standing committee, the provincial assembly and other forums, on board to improve quality of education. He said thousands of vacancies were lying vacant in the education government.

Mr Babak said number of out-of-school children was increasing. He asked the government to increase the education budget, and implement service structure of teachers.

Published in Dawn, December 14th, 2019