April 1, 2016: Earlier this year, Aga Khan Education Services, Pakistan (AKES-P) upgraded 18 schools in all three of the regions it operates in: Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), Chitral and Southern Pakistan, increasing the enrollment in its schools by 2,109 and the teaching staff by 108.
Ten of these upgraded schools are in GB, six are in Chitral, and two are in South. The upgrades are a part of providing continuity of education for AKES,P students.
In total, nine school have been upgraded from the middle to high, seven schools have been upgraded from primary to middle, one from primary to high, and one from high to higher secondary.
AKES-P aims to constantly enhance access of primary constituencies to quality education, and is working towards this goal by providing a quality-driven, efficient and logical school system that provides transition opportunities to at least 50% students from pre-primary to the higher secondary level.
The upgraded sections, prior to coming under AKES-P’s management, were being run as Community-Based Schools (CBS). While the CBSs provide valuable educational services, their resources are often constrained and as a result, their teaching staff untrained and badly paid.
This is the reason why, in all of these 18 cases of upgrades, the communities aspired to convert their schools into full-fledge AKES-P schools to ensure quality education for their children. In addition to taking over classes from the CBSs, new pre-primary classes have also been initiated in some of these schools. Due to the geographical spread and tough mountainous terrain, two schools in Chitral have also started satellite campuses that are providing pre-primary classes to children too young to travel long distances.
Ismailimail 