KARACHI, Sept 18: Forty-five home schools are running in Lyari. Over 700 girls and women, who attended the six-month basic literacy course taught by female teachers, can now read and write; add, subtract and divide and can understand something about basic health care.

This is a project drawn by Anjuman Raza-i-Mustafa (ARM), a local group who also hold street schools. Both the home and the street schools are funded by the Rotary Club of Karachi Metropolitan, which also closely monitors the projects.

The teaching method is effective and the girls, all above 14 years, learn to read and write quite rapidly. For instance, Munazza Ahsan’s 40 students who have been coming to her home for just one week can now read and write a few simple sentences in Urdu.

To teach them, she uses a blackboard, a big chart and flash cards. She writes the new word on the blackboard which they repeat loudly. Then she uses the word in different simple sentences as given in the book. They repeat these and then write the sentences in their notebooks.

Ruqayya, a girl in her late teens, who has never been to school, learnt enough in six months to join class six in a regular school. To improve her Maths and English, she also attended the evening tuition classes given at the street school. Girls, like Ruqayya, are exceptions.

Most teenagers and women attending the home schools are the school drop-outs. Shazia, for instance, had dropped out of a regular school after class six and left studies for five years and forgot much of what she had learnt. Then she joined the home school, and after six months, took a test in a regular school which qualified her for class seven.

About one forth of the students are married women, for whom the home schools are a blessing. Many have never been to school at all because of family restrictions, lack of interest in studies or because the school was located too far away.

In Samia’s class, the oldest student is Zain who is in her mid forties. She is extremely eager to study but was prevented from attending the school by her family. Now at last, she can learn to read and write.

There are some model students, like Abida. She did the home school course in ‘97, attended the street school and joined a regular school in class 1X.

Now she has done her Intermediate from the Karachi College for Women, and is doing her training as a lady health worker in Ghazi Qayyum Maternity Home. The home school students study free of charge.

The teachers are paid Rs800 to Rs1,000 by the Rotary Club and are mostly matriculates or undergraduates who are given a three-day training by the ARM. The adult literacy textbooks, charts and flash cards are by Winston A. David, who earlier taught adult literacy on television.

The schools are closely monitored by coordinators who check the attendance registers and observe classes.

The home schools, which were first set up in 1996, have spread to 12 areas of Lyari. “Now we hope to introduce the schools in more deprived areas, such as Neelam Colony, Yususf Goth, Mohaj Goth etc,” says coordinator Sultan Rahi.—M.H.