press releases
U.S. Ambassador Announces Forty Scholarships For Fata Women’s Teachers’ College
10/05/2006
Peshawar - U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker today visited the Female Government College of Education for Elementary Teachers in Khyber Agency, FATA, to congratulate the faculty and staff on International Teachers’ Day and to announce forty scholarships for one year of study at the College. Ambassador Crocker was welcomed by Additional Chief Secretary Shehzad Arbab, FATA Director of Education Dr. Abdur Rauf Khan, and Principal, Khalida Adib.
The U.S. Agency for International Development is providing $60,000 to the U.S. firm, Research Triangle Institute (RTI), to administer the 2006/2007 scholarship program. Last academic year, seventeen USAID-financed female teachers graduated from the one-year program.
In FATA, only 3% of women are literate and only 40% of girls ever have the opportunity to go to school. Ambassador Crocker commended the NWFP Government and the FATA Secretariat for their hard work to improve this situation with a program of educational reform.
The shortage of female teachers is one of the main obstacles to increasing girls’ enrollment in school and the USAID-funded scholarships will help provide trained teachers for girls’ schools throughout the FATA. There is an international consensus that communities in which girls are educated are significantly healthier and wealthier than those in which they are not.
During the visit the Ambassador toured the college, the only women’s teachers’ college for elementary education in the FATA, and met with students and faculty. "I want to congratulate you for studying hard so you’ll be prepared to play your invaluable role in the development of your communities. And I want to salute your professors for all their hard work in passing on their knowledge to you, FATA’s future teachers," said Ambassador Crocker.
USAID is also helping to increase school enrollment by constructing and furnishing 65 primary, middle, and high schools in five Agencies within the FATA.
This support for education in FATA is part of the $3 billion in aid that the U.S. Government will provide to Pakistan over the next five years to improve education, health, governance, economic growth and security.