KARACHI: At the follow-up of a promise made two years ago by representatives of some 13 political parties along with many educationists to come together and do everything within their power for the betterment of education in Sindh, the politicians collected again on the call of Alif Ailaan on Friday to track and review the progress actually made during this time and formulate a way forward.

Explaining the motivation for keeping the Sindh promise, Mosharraf Zaidi, campaign director for Alif Ailaan, said that political parties may be arguing with each other on a number of things but they should all be on common ground as far as education was concerned. “If the issues of education get political ownership, it would be the best guarantor of positive change. Political will is what really matters,” he pointed out while adding that more than half of the children in Sindh were still out of school and 41 per cent of the ones enrolled in schools drop out before finishing primary school.

“In 2013 and 2014, there were 25 million children, who were out of school here. Today, there are 24 million. So we covered a big spread but there is still a long way to go,” he said.

Secretary of education and literacy department Sindh Dr Fazlullah Pechuho said that coming up with reforms to improve education was great, but ultimately it was the human resource that took them forward. “Some 80pc of teachers in Sindh are not qualified,” he pointed out one of the main issues coming in their way.

Giving a live demonstration of the biometric verification system for teaching and non-teaching staff of government schools called ‘Employees Tracking System’, he showed how teachers’ attendance in schools could be monitored.

Another presentation given at the event was of ‘Ilmi and Sitarey’, which is a way of communication with all the education stakeholders including teachers, students and parents and guiding them regarding their various queries. It was explained that for students Ilmi was a mobile school friend. For teachers and parents and just about anyone else it can help identify problems. And it is just a text message away. All that one has to do is send an SMS to Ilmi on 8398 by writing ‘Ilmi’ + message. At the other end is a dedicated team responding to all messages. And if it is a complaint about textbooks, school buildings, etc, instead of just a question, they open a ‘case’ where the responsible person in a department concerned is given seven days to solve the problem at hand. If they can’t do that, the case is moved up to their superior. At the moment some 590,000 conversations among 500,000 stakeholders are taken care of on a daily basis. The service is available for Re0.50 plus tax per SMS.

Later, giving their views about the presentations of projects that can prove beneficial in bridging the gaps in education in the province many of the guests at the event thought they were a good idea.

MPA Mehtab Akbar Rashdi of the PML-F said that the biometric system to keep a check on teachers’ attendance was a good idea. “Still if you don’t recruit teachers on merit then things are not going to improve,” she said. “You need to remove the political influence when hiring teachers. Also, people who have been posted for a project are not allowed to complete their tenures. They are removed in the middle of things when the project is yet to reach completion. Then if a project turns out to be beneficial, it needs to be integrated within the system, which doesn’t happen here,” she added.

MQM leader Faisal Sabzwari said that the state of education here was such that everyone can criticise it. “But if you take political recruitments, I say okay it happened but what are you doing for their grooming now?” he asked.

Faisal Ahmed Uqaili, chief programme manager of Reform Support Unit, said that he had observed that parents wanted to send their children to school and the teachers wanted to teach so things were not that bad after all. “Still we need to create an enabling environment for teachers, students and the community,” he said.

Finally, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the secretary of education and the various leaders present at the event, including MNA Dr Arif Alvi of the PTI, MPA Mehtab Akbar Rashdi, MPA Dr Seema Zia of the PTI and MPA Soorat Thebo of the PML-N. The MoU promises elected officials the provision of constituency-wise data of government schools, school visits in their constituencies, information pertaining to funds allocated to each School Management Committee (SMC), and updates on school improvement plans and the Sindh Education Sector Plan 2014-18.

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2016