The majority of middle schools run by the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) do not have properly equipped IT labs, even though information technology is taught as a compulsory subject from grade five to eight in public schools

An FDE source said that most FDE run schools also do not have teachers to teach the subject, though IT was made a compulsory subject in the tenure of former president Pervez Musharraf.

Out of 392 FDE run schools, only 152 have proper IT labs.

“When the middle schools were built many years ago, we did include rooms that would house IT labs, but schools were then not provided with computers,” said Taj Bhatti, who is FDE Director Planning.

However, he said all public high schools did have IT labs.

“Most of our students come from underprivileged families and don’t have computers at home. They cannot learn about using computers as we don’t have IT labs in schools as well. This has led to most of our students not knowing how to use computers,” said the principal of a middle school in Bhara Kahu.

The issue has been taken up with FDE by middle school principals which has not had any positive effect.

“Leaning about computers is very important because this is the era of information technology. But FDE is not at all bothered about the shortage of IT labs and teachers in the schools it looks over,” he said.

A senior FDE official told Dawn that officers at FDE and the Capital Administration and Development Division were aware of the shortage of IT labs and teachers.

He said under the prime minister’s reform initiative, all schools will be provided with state-of-the-art IT labs and specialist teachers would also be hired.

Published in Dawn, April 22nd, 2016