Islamabad: Pakistan government launched the ‘School on Wheels’ project to being education to the doorstep of children whose parents are unable to send them to school.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif launched the initiative on Tuesday and expressed hopes that the initiative would increase the literacy rate in Pakistan, particularly in rural areas. During the inauguration of mobile schools, PM Sharif said that the project aims to offer equal educational opportunities to children in rural areas who lacked the availability of modern educational facilities.

The prime minister also interacted with the schoolchildren at the launch ceremony. He urged the kids to utilise mobile libraries and hoped that it would promote a reading culture among the children. Education Minister Rana Tanveer Hussain briefed the prime minister on various features of the project. He said that in addition to mobile libraries, the project would also provide meals to the students enrolled in mobile classrooms, fostering a culture of reading and nourishment.

Eight mobile school buses

The bright-coloured buses were decorated with balloons and the windows were painted with alphabets and cartoons. The inside of the mobile classrooms is bright and clean, its interior filled with images of alphabets, numbers, days of the week, and pictures of fruit and animals. On the first day, children were seen sitting on colorful chairs inside the bus as a teacher used the interactive whiteboard for teaching.

Initially, the mobile school project consists of eight buses that will provide primary-level education to the children of Islamabad and nearby areas. Each bus is equipped with computers, desks, whiteboards, and LCDs. The government plans to increase the number of buses and expand the project to the rest of the country.

The ‘school on wheels’ project aims to bring education to the doorstep of disadvantaged children to give them a chance to learn. Several similar mobile school projects have been earlier introduced in Pakistan by public and private organisations.