A REPORT in this paper on Saturday highlighted the problems of a government school in a village in Swat district. At the severely understaffed Malok Abad Primary School in Mingora, some 700 boys are crammed into six classrooms, while younger students are made to study out in the open — in the courtyard or the rooftop — as infrastructure damaged in the 2005 earthquake still sits unrepaired. Two teachers rotate between four classrooms. And there are no toilets. This is the same district that made international headlines a decade ago when the TTP took control and banned girls’ education — one of its first casualties in its war against the state. This is the same district where Malala Yousafzai, today the global face for girl’s education in the world, lived and went to school. And yet, years after the state regained its territory and militancy was pushed back — and despite increased funding by the previous (and current) KP government, as well as the introduction of technological innovation such as the biometric system to increase teacher and student attendance — public education in KP remains in dire straits. The challenges of a young and rising population add to the burden, as there are simply not enough resources to accommodate everyone. By some estimates, Pakistan’s population would have swollen to 240m by 2030. And while it may be unfair to paint all government schools with the same broad brush, lumping them into one entity, the school in Mingora does present something of a microcosm for the state of government schools in the country: underfunded, ill-planned and understaffed.

Another recent report states that 1,800 state-run primary, middle and high schools in Balochistan have been found to be nonfunctional. Another 2,200 schools are without shelter and 5,000 primary schools across Balochistan are being run by single teachers. In Sindh, the provincial education department informed the Sindh High Court that 11,850 primary schools out of 38,132 in the public sector could possibly be declared ‘not viable’ after a proposed assessment of low- and no-enrolment schools is conducted. This is just the data on the state of primary schools — secondary and high schools are even scarcer. While politicians bicker amongst themselves, indulging in either a short-sighted blame game or self-praise, the state of public education continues to remain one of the most neglected sectors in the country.

Published in Dawn, December 17th, 2018