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May 5, 2002
ARTICLES: High dropout rates
FROM April 21 to 28, the global action week for education was observed in 80 countries. The idea was to draw attention to the global crisis which is denying education to a large number of children the world over. With 78 million illiterate citizens in the country, it is time Pakistan also began pondering seriously the importance of education for development and progress. While many reasons have been identified for the failure to improve literacy rates substantially, one important phenomenon which needs to be analyzed more carefully is the high school dropout rate in the country.
The appalling fact is that 75 per cent of the children who enrol in primary classes today do not enter secondary school. Ironically enough, the authorities are no longer alarmed by this, at least they have stopped expressing their concern on the matter. A high dropout rate amounts to tremendous waste of resources, apart from the distortions it causes in the government’s planning for education. The figures for primary school enrolment ratio are, therefore, quite misleading. Most children who join at the primary level drop out at some stage and do not go on to join the secondary school. Since it is known that enduring literacy cannot be acquired by a child in less than three years of thorough studies, the majority of these children which drops out simply lapse into illiteracy.
Why are our schools unable to hold on to the children who do enrol in the first place? The simple answer is that the schools do not provide them the education they are looking for to improve the quality of their lives and find jobs for themselves. In many cases the teachers are absent from schools and the children have no incentive to attend their classes. In other cases, the teachers are there but the quality of teaching is so poor that the child learns virtually nothing. When a school has a reasonably motivated teacher to offer, the children are cheated of good education because of the dismally poor textbooks and irrelevant curriculum. The shocking physical environment of most government schools would hardly attract a child either.
In these circumstances, can the children be blamed for dropping out of school after attending it for a short while only? As it is, the school is competing for the child’s attention with the home (where young girls are required to help look after their siblings) and the workplace where the boys go to join the swelling ranks of child labour. Were the education authorities to focus on the quality of education they can offer in the public sector institutions, they should be able to retain many of the potential dropouts.
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