KARACHI: Sindh facing shortage of teachers: Govt school census 2005
By Mukhtar Alam
KARACHI, July 24: At present Sindh is failing to maintain the strength of government school teachers that it had about eight years back, while on the other hand the number of schools increased on average by 600 per year.
According to the latest data pertaining to the government school census carried out for 2005 by the newly formed Reform Support Unit (RSU) of the Sindh education department, there are a total of 46,050 educational institutions up to higher secondary level in for an accumulated enrolment of 4,238,993 students, including 1,656,058 (39.32 per cent) women, with 127,657 teachers, including 40,297 (31.56 per cent) women.
In 1998, the government schools from primary to higher secondary levels had 146,078 teachers, which dropped to 141,001 in 2002, 139,959 in 2003, and 139,021 in 2004.
The increase in number of schools, according to observers, can be attributed to political expediencies of the rulers, inability of the government to afford more induction of teachers and idea to attract more funds in the name of schools from the federal government and donor agencies, which in return affected the "educational standard", whatsoever the province had.
It sounds strange that schools are popping up, while faculty required for any meaningful teaching exercise continued to decline, commented a senior academicians.
The chief programme manager of the RSU, Iqbal Durrani and Dr Roshan Sheikh, a consultant to the school census project, expressed the view that the number of schools were on the rise perhaps due to the practice that schools were being established in districts and talukas without the approval of the Sindh government, which, among other steps, had also to ensure provision of teachers at schools before their establishment.
They were unanimous in saying that the establishment of additional schools as branch schools would remain a threat to the main stream educational infrastructures.
Mr Sheikh said that the census 2005-06 project was completed in record time. The entire data on enrolment, teachers, schools and colleges of the province, available facilities will be available for public inspection by July 31, in addition to its display on the RSU website, he informed.
Mr Durrani said that the project cost about Rs10 million, out of which Rs4.1 million had been paid to data collectors and schools supervisors, since April 2006 when the RSU took charge of conducting the physical census for the first time, instead of generating data by projection. Earlier this was a job of a unit of the Sindh education department known as Sindh Education Management Information System, he added.
In the primary education sub-sector, according to census data, 438 schools, including 166 for girl students, were established in 2002, the figure raised to 656, including 128 for girls, in 2003 and 481, including 127 for girls, were established in 2004.
In the middle, secondary and higher secondary education sides, an addition of 69, 10 and 6 was respectively recorded for 2005. The report mentioned that the enrolment in primary education increased from 2,915,263 (2004) to 3,267,182 students in 2005.
In the case of middle, secondary and higher secondary levels the latest recorded enrolments were 195,584, 609,514 and 166,713 respectively. The share of woman students in the overall enrolment came as 39 per cent, which is almost equivalent to the rate of participation of girl students in government primary schools.
There are 19,926 boys, 8,090 girls and 18,034 mixed (for girls and boys) educational institutions in the province under government's administration. As many as 92,541 teachers, including 26,036 women, were employed for primary schools, while another 9,107, including 4,426 for middle level, 21,733, including 8,268 women, for secondary level and 4,272, including 1,566 for higher secondary level.
The maximum enrolment of students at the government schools was recorded in Karachi district, ie 654,747, including 354,620 women, followed by Khairpur Mirs with 290,034, including 106,912 women, Naushehro Feroze with 258,474, including 102,235 women, and Dadu with 247,998, including 83,139 women.
A maximum of 3,751 schools existed in district Karachi, followed by 3,688 in Tharpakar, 3,587 in Khairpur Mirs and 3,285 in Sanghar.
