KARACHI, Jan 1: As many as 5,732 government schools, up to higher secondary level, are lying closed and another 2,471 are being run in dilapidated buildings in Sindh, according to official data.

There are a total of 43,035 schools in the province and about 13 per cent (5,544) of those lying closed are located in rural areas where the government is already facing the challenge of illiteracy and poor enrolment at educational institutions.

Figures show that the number of dangerous school-buildings has also gone up. There were 1,703 such buildings in 1999-2000 which have now increased to 2,471. The data indicates at the government’s failure in tackling the situation perfectly.

An official of the Sindh education department claimed that the issue had been taken up with the federal government by the provincial authorities with the cooperation of the local government. “We do realize the risk of running the schools in unsafe buildings,” he said adding that a positive outcome was expected when a fresh school census would be conducted because a lot of work had been undertaken during the year 2000.

The 11th school census report (2001) is in the printing process whereas field work for the 12th census (2002) is to be started in a couple of weeks.

The provincial Education Department’s mechanism, Sindh Education Management Information System (SEMIS), which has been entrusted with undertaking surveys, data verification and compilation of information about public sector schools and colleges in the province, had completed the field work for the school census 2001 in March last year, an official said.

According to the official figures, more than 28,300 schools lack basic facilities like drinking water, toilets and boundary walls. Out of the 7,246 buildings of girls schools, 3,895 have no boundary walls.

Only 7,826 schools of the total 43,035 have the power facility whereas 26,951 have no play grounds. As for the advanced facilities, only 1,051 have laboratories and just 911 have libraries. School management committees existed at 31,656 schools.

According to the SEMIS census, only 45 per cent of 6.789 million population falling in the age bracket of 4-14 — considered eligible to attend primary, middle and secondary school classes — were enrolled in the educational institutions run by the Sindh government during the session 2001-2002.

The attendance rate in primary, middle and secondary classes, as recorded by the official agency, stood as 48 per cent, 22 per cent and 27 per cent respectively. The rest of the eligible population either went to privately-run institutions or remained away from education.

In the case of intermediate, degree and post-graduate enrolments, the census data revealed that 19 per cent of the 821,816 population eligible for intermediate classes were enrolled at higher secondary schools and colleges, while another 38,720 were enrolled at degree colleges and the very negligible number (666) of the age group 19-20 is attending post-graduate classes at government colleges.

In all, 147,016 teachers have been employed for more than 3.233 million students, among those about 1.2 million (37 per cent) are female students studying in primary to post-graduate and professional colleges.

There are 37,103 schools in rural and 5,932 in urban areas. A total of 19,261 institutions are imparting education to male and another 7,246 to female students whereas 16,528 schools have co-education facility.

Mirpurkhas district has the highest number of schools and colleges (3,671) followed by Hyderabad with 3,519. Khairpur Mirs has 3,402 and Karachi has 3,394 such institutions whereas Thar (Mithi) has 3,318.

The highest participation rate of eligible population in schools and colleges has been recorded at 38 per cent (47 per cent of them male and 28 per cent female) in Naushero Feroze, 36 per cent in Khairpur Mirs and 29 per cent each in Sanghar and Nawabshah districts.

The highest number of teachers employed appeared to be in Karachi (30,614) followed by Hyderabad with 16,426 and Sanghar 10,098. There are 6,370 one-room schools, 13,184 two-room, 1,432 three-room, 1,656 four-rooms and 1,835 five-room schools in Sindh. The number of the schools having more than five rooms is 3,296, according to the official figures.