Peshawar orders students moved out of dilapidated school buildings

The Elementary and Secondary Education Directorate in Peshawar has issued urgent directives to move students out of dangerous and dilapidated school buildings to safer places. Official letters were sent to all District Education Officers, instructing school administrations to evacuate at once any structure that technical experts have identified as hazardous.

The decision follows safety assessments carried out by engineers of the Communication and Works (C&W) Department. Nawa-i-Waqt also reported that the C&W Department and technical experts had declared the buildings of a number of schools dangerous.

Under the directives, school administrators must move enrolled students without delay to safe portions of their existing campuses or to nearby government schools. If no government building nearby is available, officials have been told to rent alternative private facilities for classes.

District education teams are mapping nearby infrastructure to help with the relocations, and local administrative committees are overseeing how space is allocated.

School heads are to seal off specific hazardous rooms or damaged structural sections rather than close entire campuses, provided the remaining portions are certified safe. Structural engineers are carrying out follow-up inspections to mark the hazardous boundaries inside affected schools. Until formal repairs begin, staff must keep students out of the designated danger zones, and campus safety monitors are tasked with enforcing the perimeters.

Daily Times reported that investigations into a building collapse in Peshawar's Dir Colony found poor construction standards and structural defects behind the failure. Public advocacy groups and parents have demanded immediate safety audits of all educational facilities in the province, and the provincial education department has begun structural evaluations across all districts.

District Education Officers are submitting daily compliance reports on student relocations and building sealings to the central directorate. The provincial government plans to allocate emergency funding to repair, renovate or rebuild damaged public schools, and civil works departments are preparing technical estimates for reconstruction. Educational planners aim to restore normal school operations as repairs are completed.