QUETTA: About 33 per cent of children in Balochistan, aged between six and 16, are out of school and student competency in learning English and Arithmetic is deplorable, says a survey report.

The report on the status of education in Balochistan during the year 2014 compiled by the Annual Status of Education Reporter (Aser) Pakistan, an NGO, was launched at a seminar here on Thursday.

The director, Idara-i-Taleem-o-Aagahi, Baela Raza Jameel, said the survey had been based on information about 60,535 children aged between 3 and 16. She said the data about these children, 39pc of those are girls, had been collected by volunteers who visited 18,536 households in 947 villages.

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“The survey revealed that the private sector is performing better than the government sector as far as the learning levels of children are concerned,” she said.

Quoting from the survey report, Ms Raza said that student competencies in learning English, Arithmetic and Language were deplorable and added that 67pc of students of Class-V were unable to read Class-II level text in Urdu.

“In English, only 28pc of the surveyed Class-V students could read sentences which should ideally be read by students from the second grade and a similar trend has been observed in Arithmetic capabilities of children where only 24pc of Class-V children were able to do a two-digit division respectively,” she said.

She said boys were outperforming girls in literacy and numeracy skills in rural Balochistan where 34pc of boys were found able to read sentences in Urdu as compared to 23pc girls.

Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2015

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