KARACHI: Only 2.59 per cent public schools have a library and 2.34pc have science laboratories in Sindh. Approximately 95pc of the education budget is consumed by staff salaries, including ghost staff, and only 5pc is spent on upgrading schools and maintenance. Thatta has the worst condition in terms of facilities as only 33pc of the schools there have toilets, only 17pc have water, 12pc have electricity and 37pc have a boundary wall.

These are some of the points highlighted in a report titled ‘Access to education — Sindh district profiles and rankings’, which was launched on Friday at a local hotel.

The report is prepared by the Manzil Pakistan, a non-governmental organisation, on the state of primary education in Sindh. It covers enrolment rate, proportion of functional schools, size of schools and presence of necessary physical facilities in schools.

The report uses three data sources: the Sindh Education Management Information System (2012-2013), the Annual Status of Education Report 2013 and the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement 2012-2013.

‘There are 218,118 ghost schools in Sindh’

All the sources, according to the report, showed different enrolment numbers and thus ranking of districts by a particular indicator differed across the source.

The Education Score Index ranks Larkana as the best performing district and Thatta as the worst performing one. The report focuses on factors that have led to such results; the prominent reasons are the level of interest shown by the government, the role of district education officers, the state of schools and their facilities, budgetary allocation and spending.

Total enrolment was highest in Matiari and lowest in Shikarpur and Badin. Karachi had a low public enrolment rate but the highest private enrolment rate.

Girls’ enrolment was found much lower in Sindh than boys’, indicating that there is a need to focus on getting girls to school. It was also observed that private enrolment was even lower for girls than it was for boys in most districts.

“Gender disparity which is calculated as male enrolment minus female enrolment is highest in Ghotki, Kashmore and Mirpurkhas. Karachi has the highest enrolment rate for boys and Shikarpur has the lowest,” the report says.

According to the report, there are 47,394 schools in Sindh. Out of the 6.7 million children aged between five to nine years, only 2.5m attend school. In the provincial budget, the government has allocated Rs145 billion for education, which is 21pc of the total budget.

On an average 88pc schools in Sindh were functional. This surprisingly high number, the report says, might be explained by the School Consolidation Programme undertaken by the Reform Support Unit on the behest of the World Bank. As of Dec 2012, 1,068 government schools have been consolidated in seven districts, it says.

It was seen that while availability of water, toilet and boundary wall in public schools varied from district to district, public schools in almost all districts suffered from an acute shortage of electricity. Almost all districts in Sindh faced a shortage of classrooms.

On the non-functional and ghost schools, the report cites a news report according to which 4,540 schools in Sindh are not functioning properly and the number of ghost schools is 218,118.

“Public schooling is the single most powerful agent to enable a transition to mass education in the country,” the report concludes while giving recommendations on how to improve primary education.

Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2015

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