November 19, 2006

THE recent briefing given to the president (November 4, 2006) by the Department of Education, Sindh, and the subsequent reports on it printed in newspapers led one to believe that the president was disappointed with the whole thing. An editorial printed in Dawn (November 8, 2006) only made matters worse by saying that the president had “reprimanded” the Department of Education for its bad performance.

This isn’t entirely true. For starters, the president took out the time to attend this presentation at the invitation of the department which was given in the presence of the governor of Sindh as well as the chief minister.

The president listened to the briefing with interest, gave full support to the proposed reforms and agreed to the requests where his special support was needed. He discussed the problems brought to the forefront by the department, fully including the implementation of the reforms and the time frame in which they were expected to be completed.

The presentation consisted of an overview of the work being carried out by the department, the problems facing education in Sindh and the initiatives taken by the department. Some decisions which included giving the go-ahead on teacher recruitment purely on merit and in a transparent manner were also made and support was given towards efforts at improving governance and procuring capable officials to take charge of the department at all levels. The example of the Punjab government was given in this regard.

It must be mentioned here that never before has education in Pakistan received a budget which actually meets the needs of the people. Sufficient attention was never paid to the development of the country’s human resource – the people – and to this end, educational reforms serve as encouragement for all those willing to make an effort.

Some decisions taken in the past, such as the nationalisation of schools in the ’70s, were disastrous for education and pushed the country back by at least 30 years. Other random interventions, though well-meaning initiatives, such as the Nai Roshni schools of the ’80s for which the Iqra tax was levied, had simply failed to deliver. These failures were also because of ad hocism and decisions made without knowing what the people wanted. However, efforts are being made to change all of that now.

For instance, improvement in the quality of education coupled with examination reform is currently being implemented. The classroom performance of teachers is being improved by intensive training of both teachers and head-teachers. In fact, one exercise of training the head-teachers of higher secondary and high schools has already been completed and will be followed by further courses. Comprehensive plans have been drawn up not only to give refresher courses to existing teachers but also to provide training to new recruits by well-qualified master trainers.

The review of textbooks has been undertaken in tandem with fundamental reforms in the syllabus undertaken by the federal government. This will ensure substantial improvement in the quality of books. A start has been made in teaching English from class one and teachers are being recruited and trained to teach the language.

The current policy of the government states that all schools in Sindh will teach three languages: Sindhi, Urdu and English. This will be carried out by teaching various subjects in these languages; for instance, mathematics and science and geography in English and language, history, religion and Pakistan studies to be taught either in Sindhi or Urdu. The aim is that by the time a child completes his/her matriculation, s/he should be able to read and write intelligibly in these languages. All extraneous matter is being removed from the texts of a particular subject to make the teaching of those subjects more focused.

In addition there is a comprehensive programme which includes providing facilities, such as water, electricity, lavatories, boundary walls and additional classrooms, to make sure that the schools are well-equipped. The bulk of this work is to be completed in three years.

The gap between primary schools and middle and high schools is huge (41,713 primary schools as against less than 4,179 middle and high schools) and a phased and well-planned programme has been undertaken to fill this gap. Funds have been promised for this purpose by donor agencies and primary schools are already in the process of being upgraded. Thus, 1,200 primary schools are being upgraded with the help of loans from Asian Development Bank. The Sindh government is also building approximately 450 schools from the Annual Development Budget. As soon as more funds become available, further work will be undertaken.

Governance is a big issue in the province and this is being addressed by the creation of an education cadre to improve management and institutional capacity. Steps have already been taken in this regard by testing and grading the capability of officials. The district education officials (DEOs) are being thoroughly trained and school management committees are also being given training and their work being made transparent through monitoring. The chief minister’s initiative with respect to setting up local unofficial monitoring committees is already in operation, checking schools in remote areas of the province.

Unlike the past, the reforms now being undertaken have a solid database and are devised rationally and realistically. A Reform Support Unit (RSU) has been set up to provide this database using the latest MIS and GIS systems.

This provides details of all schools, their student and teacher strength, names of teachers and their qualifications and the names of students and their classes. The geographical location of schools is mapped not only by information on the ground but also through satellite imagery which gives the distance between each school and will help in devising future strategies for building and upgrading new schools.

RSU is also an effective instrument for monitoring, transparent delivery of stipends to girl students and for the distribution of free textbooks from class one to ten. This was demonstrated this year when books were delivered to primary schools throughout the province at the start of the school year and shortly afterwards to the higher classes, in spite of the monsoon season and disruption of power supply in the months when books are printed and distributed.

The stipends, which are given to girls as incentives to continue their studies beyond primary classes, and which have been increased from class six to 10 by the chief minister are now delivered by post. Till last year, this was a source of scandal as there were many reports of misuse of this money and the girls hardly got a part of the stipends due to them.

Efforts are also being made to involve parents and communities in their children’s education. A study to analyse the reasons behind closed schools and to examine ways of opening them has been outsourced. Work is also being done on ways to implement a public-private partnership. More than 1,100 closed schools have already been made functional.

The situation regarding private schools in the province is also being closely monitored and it has been found that outside Karachi and Hyderabad, only nine per cent of the schools in the rest of Sindh are private.

Finally, there is the matter of teachers’ unions, which had long been holding the schools in Sindh hostage resulting in notorious absenteeism among teachers. They have been banned and a visible improvement in teacher attendance at schools as well as in classroom teaching has been noticed. Thus, the briefing was not the disappointment that it was made out to be.

The writer is the minister for the education and literacy department, government of Sindh

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