Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif has claimed that her government’s flagship Schools of Eminence offer much better facilities than private schools charging Rs100,000 in fees, as she promoted the province’s education reforms at a ceremony in Jhelum. Addressing students and parents at an event to distribute Honhaar Scholarships and laptops, she pointed to Attock, where a private grammar school and a government-run School of Eminence stand side by side, and said the public institution came out ahead on facilities.
The comparison is the centrepiece of the government’s case for its school programme. The Schools of Eminence feature air-conditioned classrooms, modern laboratories and highly qualified faculty, amenities the chief minister said were not even available at some private schools charging fees of Rs100,000. For a family paying that much, the claim is a direct challenge: the standard bought in the private sector can now be found, free of charge, in a government school.
She challenged critics to identify a single public-sector school outside Punjab that matched the standard of the Schools of Eminence. The programme is being rolled out at scale, with 300 such institutions being established across the province, each carrying the same facilities, from air-conditioned classrooms to science laboratories and artificial intelligence labs, so a child in a smaller town gets the same standard as a child in Lahore. Education, she told the audience, is the best investment because every child is an ambassador of Pakistan.
Jhelum School Opening
The chief minister also announced that the Nawaz Sharif School of Eminence in Jhelum will become operational on December 15, giving the district its own flagship public school within weeks. She added that Green Bus services will be launched in Dina, Sohawa and Pind Dadan Khan in January, extending free student transport to three more towns. The announcements were made at the same ceremony where scholarships and laptops were handed to students, presented as one package of support for young people rather than separate projects.
That package reaches well beyond the classroom. The chief minister said her government was providing more than 100,000 scooters to students across Punjab, with recipients also receiving proper training, and that students were getting free travel on Green Buses across the province. The Green Buses running in Lahore and Rawalpindi, she said, are the same as those operating in Khushab, Layyah and Bhakkar. For students in smaller towns, transport is often the difference between attending school and dropping out.
The scholarships are part of the Honhaar Scholarship Programme, under which awards have already gone to 108,000 students in the first three phases. The programme is aimed at talented students who might otherwise leave education because of financial pressure, and the chief minister has repeatedly described its recipients as the cream of Punjab. At an earlier ceremony in Attock, where laptops and Honhaar scholarships were distributed to students of the Rawalpindi division, she recalled a girl who struggled financially after her mother’s death and said the scholarship had allowed her to continue her studies. The message is that no talented student should be denied an education for want of money.
The chief minister said 50,000 schools across Punjab were educating millions of children, and the Schools of Eminence are meant to raise the standard at the top of that system. An electric bike scheme for students, with pink bikes for girls and black bikes for boys, is also due to be launched. The aim is to remove, one by one, the practical obstacles that keep children out of school.
No Tolerance for Corruption
Turning to accountability, the chief minister declared that her government was executing development projects worth billions of rupees and challenged critics to point to any embezzlement of public money. She swore she would not spare any minister if evidence of corruption emerged against them, and she asked those who objected to explain why they were sitting as ministers rather than resigning and going home. The remarks tied the spending on schools, buses and scholarships to a claim that the money behind it is being spent honestly.
She also took aim at past governments in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, saying those who looted public money during thirteen to fourteen years of rule were now being exposed, while every penny in Punjab was being spent on public welfare. The contrast was deliberate, framing Punjab’s programme not only as an education policy but as evidence of a different style of government, in which large budgets are matched by visible results.
Whether the Schools of Eminence live up to the chief minister’s comparison will be judged in the months ahead, as the new schools open and parents compare them with the private alternatives. The Jhelum school opens on December 15, the new bus services follow in January, and the 300 schools are being established across the province. If the facilities, the teaching and the transport all arrive as promised, the government will have a powerful argument that public education in Punjab can match the private sector. For now, the chief minister has put her name to that claim and told parents to hold her to it.
