Talking to media persons at his office, Advisor to the Chief Minister on Education Ziaullah Bangash disclosed that allocations of Rs.180 billion have been proposed in the provincial budget for the next fiscal year, out of which Rs. 20 billion shall be earmarked for the tribal districts. As the government does not provide any funding for higher education therefore the entire education budget will be spent on elementary and secondary education whereas the parameters of knowledge economy do encompass the promotion of quality higher education as well.
The development component of education budget shall be spent on the construction of 800 new schools. However, in urban areas the expansion of existing infrastructure is inevitable to properly accommodate the increased number of students. Likewise, the pressing issue of acute shortage of textbooks in government schools, store of Textbook Board and book shops warrants immediate attention. Even in a number of government schools class teachers do not have their copies of textbooks of different subjects. The dearth of textbooks has added to the worries of teachers, students and their parents. It is pertinent to mention that provincial government used to provide textbooks along with workbooks free of cost to government schools more than the number of enrolled students and strength of teaching staff. In addition to the liberal supply to government schools, fairly large numbers of textbooks were sold out to bookshops to cater to the requirement of the students and teachers of private schools. But this year, less numbers of books have been printed by the Textbook Board. The allocations for the printing of textbooks need upward revision.
