MULTAN: Most of the government primary schools in the districts of Multan and Bahawalpur lack or have depleted facilities and don’t have sufficient number of teachers and support staff.

It has been revealed in a research conducted by a non-government organisation -- Society for the Protection of the Rights of Child (SPARC) -- with the support of ILM Idea, a funding agency from UK.

Giving details of the findings, SPARC Programme Manager Kashif Bajeer says data collection for research was conducted through key informant interviews, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, interactive group sessions with students and case studies in urban and pre-urban localities of Multan and Bahawalpur districts.

Research shows given choice parents opted for son’s education; girls dropout higher than the boys

“The study covered a total of 64 schools (32 from each district: 16 public and as many private). The private school sample was stratified to include equal numbers of low and medium fee schools ranging from Rs150 to Rs800 monthly fees,” he says.

Bajeer says the selection of institutes was done through a list of public and private schools provided by the education departments of the respective districts while only urban and semi-urban union councils were selected considering that private schools mushrooming is significantly higher in urban and semi-urban localities.

He says selection of specific schools was done through purposive sampling, with data collected from only those private and public schools that are in the same catchment area and in case of private schools have a fee structure between Rs150 and Rs800 per month.

“In each district, a total of 32 Focus Groups Discussions (FGDs) were organised with parents of the children enrolled in public and private primary schools while interactive sessions with children were also conducted with groups of eight to 10 children in five selected private schools and as many public schools,” he says.

Bajeer says the main findings of the research are that the access to schools comes across as a major determining factor in parents’ decision to select a school for children, most children walk to school as almost negligible number of schools offer any transportation facilities while private transport is beyond parents’ economic means, another major consideration for parents is the quality of education in the school which is determined by teachers qualification, attentiveness, and regularity, in addition to school discipline, responsiveness of the management and keeping the parents informed and the parents also wanted a secure and well-guarded learning environment for their children and felt that public schools did not provide that.

“Parents were prepared to sacrifice space like lack of playground or cramped classrooms but desired functioning facilities like latrines, drinking water, comfortable furniture and learning material inside the school, primary education was perceived as the foundation for future education after which many parents planned moving their children to public schools,” the report says.

It further states that the children attending public schools were mostly perceived as belonging to poor households which was mostly factual as well; While there were indications that private education raised the prestige of the family; public schools in general lacked or had depleted facilities as well as did not have sufficient number of teachers and support staff; public sector teachers were more qualified and experienced but were inadequate in numbers as a result in most cases were ineffective as teachers; public schools did not maintain discipline and were generally indifferent towards students’ behavioural issues.

“They were also perceived to be non-responsive towards the parents; there was a growing recognition amongst parents about the importance of girls’ education, however, given a choice parents opted for the son’s education rather than the daughter. Girls dropout was more than the boys and their enrollment also went down after primary schooling; the district government institutional stakeholders recognised their limitations in terms of improving primary school education in their respective districts but were helpless due to lack of funds and education policies were formulated at the provincial level and were usually far from the ground reality, therefore have not been able to show any positive results,” the report says.

Bajeer says the research is indicative of rapid mushrooming of private schools in low and low middle income urban and pre-urban localities of the study districts as the result of a basic supply and demand mechanism which the public sector schools are unable to match.

He says the primary education is recognised as an important area at the government level with several initiatives introduced to strengthen primary education, however, the enforcement and implementation of these initiatives needs improvement with higher level of engagement by the respective authorities.

Published in Dawn, January 14th, 2015

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