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April 21, 2002
ARTICLES: Private versus public
A REPORT on the public sector educational institutions in Karachi released by the city government is quite revealing. The most shocking information to emerge from this report is the extraordinarily high enrolment of children in private schools as compared to those attending government institutions. According to this report, there are 2,012 private schools in the city with 909,000 students on their rolls. There are only 483,731 children studying in 2,783 government schools in Karachi. This points to an anomaly which does not reflect too well on the government’s efforts in the field of education.
Taking up the government’s own schools first, it has widely been reported that their enrolment has been falling. The authorities have themselves admitted that. The pertinent question is why parents have stopped sending their children to government schools? This is something to be investigated in view of the fact that public sector institutions charge a nominal fee which should normally have attracted the children from the indigent classes. This is not happening. There is something seriously wrong with the government school system, if it is losing enrolment. Evidently, teachers’ absenteeism, the poor teaching methods adopted, and the deplorable quality of the education being imparted has driven the children away from school. Those who can are going to the private schools. Others are out on the streets or swelling the child labour force.
The phenomenal growth in the numbers of private schools has filled the vacuum. If nothing else, it proves that our people have the initiative to provide the services when the government fails to shoulder its responsibility. Whether they are the high brow elite schools — some of which have acquired fancy buildings — or the little schools housed in small tenements in the kutcha abadis, they are the community’s own response to the government’s failure to set up facilities to educate children. But having said that, it needs to be pointed out that this is not a satisfactory state of affairs.
First of all the private schools charge fees which are not affordable for the families whose children go to study there. Whether they are students from the middle class paying Rs3000 or so per child every month or the children of the workers paying Rs150, this amounts to quite a big chunk from the family income. Add to this the investment in textbooks and stationery and the education budget soars. It is time some kind of subsidy/grants/tax reliefs were provided to the schools to help them lower their fees.
The quality of education being imparted in these institutions is not always of the best kind. This is especially true of the small institutions which do not have trained teachers and do not have the facilities to upgrade themselves academically. Rather than cracking down on them, the government should seek to help them by offering their teachers in-service training. The proprietors who mean well could also benefit from guidelines in new methods of educational management.
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