Ensuring quality education for the underprivileged in pakistan

The Kashmir Education Foundation (KEF), a non-government organisation, has launched a Rs 30 million project for rural children offering them advanced coaching facilities.

With a large campus at Basali village, the Soan Valley Public School would also provide teacher training to girls based on international standards. Founded in 1994 in Rawalakot, AJK, the foundation has a head office in Rawalpindi. The organisation was also registered in the UK as a charity organisation with a separate board of trustees.

During a briefing to reporters, KEF Chairman Major-General (r) M Rahim Khan said the primary aim of the foundation was to impart high quality education to talented boys and girls from underprivileged sections of society with special emphasis on female education.

He said the divide between the rich and the poor was getting wider and quality education had become a dream for those belonging to the lower strata of society. With rising costs of proper schooling, there were few opportunities for underprivileged children, he added. He said the KEF was running an identical project in Rawalakot. The project was launched in 1996 and an institute for teachers� education was set up in 2000 to train graduate girls as primary school teachers. The first batch of students appeared in the matriculation exams held under the federal board in 2005. Out of 30 students, 19 secured A-1 grade and 11 secured A grade.

The foundation recently set up an endowment fund to sponsor higher education for students in the leading universities of the country or abroad, he said. He said the children from four to five years of age residing in nearby villages had been enrolled in nursery and prep classes in the newly launched project.

Over the next seven to 10 years, the foundation has planned to establish schools in rural areas of Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta. Air Marshal (r) Aftab Raja, the principal of the school in Rawalakot, Joan Atkinson, a British educationist presently heading the Institute of Teachers Education, also spoke on the occasion. Atkinson said the quality of education in the KEF institute could be compared with the best institutes in the world. There are four foreign master trainers presently working in the institute, she added.

Source: The Daily Times More

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