PESHAWAR: The northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has released a Rs2 billion as monthly stipend incentives for parents of primary and secondary school girls to send their children to school, a senior official at the province’s education department said on Thursday, as analysts argue the amount is not nearly enough to kickstart girls’ enrolment.
The literacy rate in the northwestern province stands at 53 percent according to official data, and there is a high dropout rate particularly for girls. In 2019, a KP-based women’s advocacy group, Blue Veins, and the KP department of education released a report that said 1.8 million children in the province were out of school-- a majority of them girls. The report also said that in the newly merged tribal districts, more than half of all children of school going age were not in school.
“A total of 548,316 girl students will benefit from the scheme, Afrasiab Khan, public relations officer (PRO) to the KP education minister, told Arab News.
“This is a step forward to encourage girls’ education. School girls from class 6 to 8 will get Rs200 ($1.30) a month, while those studying in class 9 and 10 will receive Rs500 ($3) every month for a year.”
In 2015, seven years ago, the KP education department was handing out the same sum of Rs200 to students in Peshawar as part of the Girls Stipend Programme. According to the latest information available on the website of the KP Elementary and Secondary Education Department, the percentage increase in girls’ school enrolment due to stipends is about 2 percent. The information could not be independently verified.
KP-based educationist Ibrash Pasha said he didn’t think the money value of the government’s stipend was enough to quell the impacts of the pandemic as dropout rates were expected to skyrocket with children being forced to work instead of getting an education once schools reopened.
“The monthly stipend of Rs200 is less than one and a half US dollar, which I think will not be very helpful in students’ retention and controlling dropouts,” Pasha said.
There was also a lack of skills-based education, Pasha said, amid the widespread belief that financial returns of traditional education were too low-- forcing children to engage in income earning activities at a very young age.
“The government should revamp the education system to reduce the dependency of learners only on jobs,” he said.
Noor Khadija, an educationist and education officer in KP, said the move could have positive impacts on female education in areas crippled by poverty.
“It will also decrease the drop out ratio and automatically increase enrolment of girls in schools,” she said
However she conceded that the key to increasing the numbers of girls in school lay in creating awareness, a better learning environment, qualified teaching staff and easy access to educational institutions.
Naila Altaf, a women rights activist, said the government would have to revise its meagre stipend amount if it really wanted to use money as a motivator for parents to educate their daughters.
“The Rs200 or Rs500 amount is too small and will not even meet students’ stationary expenses,” she said.
“I fear this policy of the government is destined to fail if it doesn’t revise the stipend amount.”
But KP education ministry’s Khan said the scheme was being launched in newly merged tribal districts as well with slightly higher incentives to offset an egregiously high out-of-school rate.
“In erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the monthly stipend is high where each student of primary and secondary level classes get Rs500 and Rs1,000 ($6.4) respectively,” he said and added disbursement of the funds will start this month.