Abdullah Jan
Islamabad: More than 200,000 children in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have benefited from a UK-supported education programme aimed at improving foundational literacy, numeracy and life skills, while more than 35,000 out-of-school children have been brought back into education.
The British High Commission said on Monday that the UK partnership with the governments of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had helped expand children’s access to schooling and deliver measurable improvements in basic learning.
The programme has produced significant gains in reading and numeracy. Urdu reading levels increased from 15 per cent to 78 per cent, while English reading improved from 15 per cent to 45 per cent. Subtraction skills also rose from 37 per cent to 67 per cent.
The initiative used learning-level assessments, targeted instruction, teacher coaching and regular progress tracking to identify learning gaps and help children catch up.
It has reached more than 500 public schools and enabled over 35,000 children who were previously out of school to return to education.
The programme has also provided remedial education to 48,000 learners and strengthened teaching capacity through the training of more than 5,500 educators and 250 Master Trainers. Facilities have also been improved at 400 schools.
British High Commissioner Jane Marriott said teachers were central to improving learning outcomes and that the most important measure of the programme’s success was whether educators found the approaches effective enough to continue using them.
“The feedback so far has been extremely encouraging,” she said, adding that bringing governments, schools and communities together had helped children who previously struggled with basic reading make significant progress.
“Children who previously could not read a simple sentence are now reading independently,” Marriott said.
Muhammad Musa Ali Bokhari, CEO of the Punjab Education Curriculum Training and Assessment Authority (PECTAA), said every child in Punjab deserved the opportunity to develop confidence in reading, writing and numeracy before progressing beyond primary school.
He said UK support had helped shift the focus on foundational learning “from theory to demonstrated practice” in Punjab.
Masood Ahmed, Special Secretary, Elementary and Secondary Education, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said the results demonstrated that targeted investment in foundational learning could deliver meaningful improvements for children and communities.
He said the provincial government remained committed to building on the progress and ensuring that every child had the opportunity to develop literacy and numeracy skills essential for lifelong learning.
The programme’s results underscore the importance of early intervention, teacher support and regular assessment in addressing learning gaps and improving educational outcomes among children in public schools.