The World Bank Mission Team held a tri-partite focus group meeting at a local hotel with the Punjab Education Foundation and its partner NGOs to discuss potential sub-reform areas for the third phase of Punjab Education Sector Reforms Program. The meeting was attended by WB’s Senior Education Specialist Scherezad Latif, Ali Insari, Ayesha Khan, Ali Inam, Hira Sarfraz, Managing Director PEF Dr. Aneela Salman, Director Maliha Batool and representatives of selected PEF partner NGOs. The meeting held detailed discussions on various aspects of public private partnership model of the foundation and observed that this free schooling model is quite useful in meeting the educational needs of economically deprived communities in Punjab.
The participants maintained that PEF is a pioneering organization in designing and implementing most useful free educational programs which have encouraged and prompted the deserving kids to join PEF sponsored schools. The meeting noted with satisfaction that PEF has targeted to enroll 2.8 million mostly out of school and dropout children by 2018 and a comprehensive plan has been chalked out to meet this target.