PM launches scheme to give 500,000 Chromebooks to top students across Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday formally launched the PM Youth Chromebook Scheme, a plan to hand 500,000 refurbished Chromebooks and internet devices to high-achieving students across the country. At a ceremony in Islamabad, the prime minister himself gave laptops and internet devices to top-performing Grade 9 students and students from seminaries.
Addressing the gathering, Sharif called students the country’s real asset and said the government was beginning a journey towards empowering them. Talent and hard work, he said, are not bound by wealth or poverty, and no deserving child should be left behind for want of a device. He recalled that a previous PML-N government had distributed 600,000 laptops on merit over ten years; the new scheme, he said, will deliver 500,000 Chromebooks in just two years.
### Who qualifies, and how selection works
The scheme is aimed at students of public schools who scored well in their Grade 9 (SSC-I) annual examinations. In Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, Grade 9 students qualify; in Islamabad, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, Grade 9 and Grade 10 students are both included. Applicants need at least 50 per cent marks, and merit lists will be verified by the Inter Board Committee of Chairmen (IBCC). Students of registered seminaries are part of the scheme too, vetted separately through the Directorate General of Religious Education.
The provincial quotas are fixed: Punjab gets 181,090 devices, Sindh 85,925, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 51,170 and Balochistan 31,815, while Islamabad receives 100,000 and Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan 25,000 each. Within each region, one device in five goes to a seminary student; among school students, 70 per cent are from science streams and 30 per cent from arts.
### Partners and the wider education push
The devices are being supplied in partnership with the Tokyo Technology Care Foundation, and the prime minister thanked overseas Pakistanis whose contributions made the programme possible. Rana Mashhood, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Youth Programme, told the ceremony the foundation had taken practical steps to bring digital facilities to 500,000 students.
Sharif also pointed to the Daanish schools programme: one school has been inaugurated in Islamabad and 27 more campuses are under construction around the country, offering free, high-quality schooling to deserving children. Alongside each Chromebook, students will receive a school bag and an internet device, so they can study from home and use e-libraries. Applications run through the IBCC portal.