LOWER DIR: The district education officer on August 15 recommended the temporary closure for one week of 18 girls’ schools in the border areas of Upper Dir amid the prevailing security situation along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. According to an official letter issued by the district education officer, Upper Dir, to the deputy commissioner, serious concerns have been raised about the safety of students and teaching staff amid the prevailing uncertainty in the district’s border
Child Rights in Focus
PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on August 15 launched a data-driven initiative to identify out-of-school children across the province and to bring them back into the education system. A memorandum of understanding in this respect was signed by the elementary and secondary education, local government, elections and rural development, health and social welfare departments. Chief Minister Sohail Afridi was also present during the MoU signing ceremony, according to an official statement from the CM Secretariat.
TAXILA: Punjab Education Minister Rana Sikandar Hayat has announced a major package of educational initiatives for Attock, including the upgradation of information technology (IT) laboratories in 110 schools at cost of Rs300 million, two new university campuses, five Pink buses for girls’ colleges and an international study tour to Turkiye for students. He was addressing as a chief guest in a ceremony organised in honour of position-holder students in the matriculation examination in Attock
PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on August 14 formally launched Global Virtual School (GVS), the first such initiative in the public sector by any government in the country, to provide virtual artificial intelligence education, linking up hundreds of schools across the length and breadth of the province. “The GVS will help overcome challenges in a province beset by natural and man-made disasters,” elementary and secondary education secretary Mohammad Khalid Khan told participants of the
KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) directed the provincial government on Thursday to constitute a committee for an “independent, impartial and comprehensive” inquiry into the HIV outbreak among children at Karachi’s Kulsum Bai Valika Hospital. A two-member SHC bench, headed by Justice Adnanul Karim Memon and comprising Justice Muhammad Jaffer Raza, issued the directive as it announced its reserved judgement on a plea seeking an independent inquiry, registration of a case and lifelong medical treatment as
Pakistan’s education crisis is not simply a crisis of outdated textbooks. It is a crisis of an outdated educational philosophy. While the world is moving towards AI, automation and knowledge-based industries, too many of our classrooms remain organised around memorisation, rote learning and examination scores. We have modernised the language of education, but have we modernised the way we teach children to think? The question is simple: are we preparing students to reproduce information,
Punjab has recorded a decline in the prevalence of stunting among children from 36 per cent in 2018 to 27%, while wasting has dropped from 15% to 10%. However, the fact that more than one in four children remain stunted keeps infant feeding and maternal nutrition high on the provincial health agenda. The figures were presented at a seminar organised by UNICEF Pakistan in collaboration with the Punjab health authorities to mark World Breastfeeding
TOBA TEK SINGH: Faisalabad’s Saddar police arrested on Monday a woman and her friend for poisoning her husband to death and also administering poison to her three minor daughters who were saved by doctors. Complainant Muhammad Tahir alleged in his FIR that on July 23, his brother Azhar Ali died mysteriously at his house in Sitara Park locality on Jaranwala Road in Faisalabad while his three nieces lost consciousness. He added that they came
GUJRAT: A 17-year-old girl, who was allegedly gang-raped by five suspects, later “died by suicide” under mysterious circumstances at Sanda village in Mandi Bahauddin district in Miana Gondal police precincts on Monday. The complainant, Zulfiqar Ahmed, of Sanda village told police that he had gone to a local shop to buy something, leaving his daughter “M” (17) alone at his house. He said that when he returned, he found his daughter lying dead. Explaining
ISLAMABAD: With Pakistan’s population having crossed 240 million and a median age of just 19, policymakers, health experts and researchers warned that the country’s demographic trajectory demands an urgent shift from short-term fixes to robust, evidence-based strategies. The stakeholders were speaking at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) seminar titled “Population Growth and Policy Coherence in Pakistan: Challenges and Pathways” held here on Monday. The seminar was steered by a wide-ranging discussion on institutional
LAHORE: A three-year-old boy who had gone missing from Kahna was found dead in a sewage pond in Bilal Town, Naseebabad. The deceased, Muhammad Hasnain’s father, Sabir, who had lodged a kidnapping case after he went missing. According to the family, the child was visiting his maternal uncle’s home from where he had gone out at night and had not returned. After being informed about the corpse, police and forensics teams collected evidence before
BAJAUR: Residents of Seeda Shah, a remote area of Charmang Valley of Nawagai tehsil on August 9 complained about the closure of a government school for more than a week due to the ‘absence’ of teachers and warned of holding a protest if the issue was not addressed immediately. Talking to reporters, the residents including Ziaur Rehman, Anjum Khan and Sahar Gul said that the government primary school for boys was the only public