There is not a single school in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata, which offers post for the teacher of the all important subject of environmental sciences.

Even cadet Colleges and semi-government schools and colleges and a large number of private educational institutions have ignored environmental sciences, which deals with an issue of national and global significance.

There is confusion among education experts on introducing it as a separate subject in schools as they believe that it would overburden the students.

Miss Amana Batool, who has recently done her MSc in environmental sciences from University of  Peshawar,  complained that she had been trying to get a job but without success.

“This is not included in our syllabus”, was the reply from the administration of different schools, she said adding subject specialists of biology, chemistry,  physics and mathematics are welcomed.

Private educational institutions mostly prefer science subject specialists and don’t give any importance to environmental sciences at 9th and 10th level. Most people consider it as an arts subject, not science, Miss Batool said.

Besides University of Peshawar, where the Department of Environmental Sciences was launched in 1988, about 12 public sector and some private sector universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and more than 100 private colleges affiliated with University of Peshawar and City District Government College have recently introduced Environmental Sciences as subject.

But still the educationists are reluctant to make it a part of the school syllabus. Surprisingly, when owner of five private educational institutions was approached to give his input on this issue he told this reporter: “What the subject environmental sciences is?  You mean ‘pollution’; I think it is an arts subject.  We run schools not industries so it is not our problem.”   He said it was the issue of some individuals and organisations and not of the schools.

“Some people and organisations raise such strange issues to earn money.  I don’t think anyone will be interested in appointing a teacher for a job which a sweeper can do,” he opined.

Noted academician Ruhul Amin while giving his remarks said that adding ES as a separate subject in school syllabus would overburden the children arguing that lessons about creating awareness among young students had already been incorporated in Pakistan Study, Urdu, English,  Social Studies and in all  science subjects.

He said introducing ES as school subject would not serve any good purpose, it would only add to mental stress of the students and force parents to pay extra amount for the proposed book.

“I stand for appointing the subject specialist in schools to run different programmes regarding environment but including book in our already jumbled up school syllabus is uncalled for,” Mr. Amin maintained.

He said that many years ago a retired police officer in KP had launched an organisation ‘Pakistan Environmental Protection Foundation’ (PEPF) and had since been actively involved in creating awareness and mobilising public against environmental hazards especially through societies and clubs in various target schools in Peshawar.

“I have recently prepared a work plan pamphlet for member-school teachers and students for 25 institutions.  I think if a qualified ES teacher is appointed for organizing such co-curricular activities in schools, it will be a better idea but introducing ES as subject will create problems,” he observed.

Talking about the severity of the issue Prof Dr Hizbullah Khan a senior faculty member at Environmental Science department of Peshawar told Dawn: “The issue is not of posts and induction of ES masters in schools, the problem is that we don’t have the necessary public awareness of numerous issues plaguing our society since very long. KP being an agro- based province is highly vulnerable to environmental hazards like deforestation, flash floods, earthquakes and even terrorism.”

He said masters ES should be inducted in Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and as environment experts in districts as EPA monitoring Officers.  ES as a subject, he said, will be included in the competitive examinations from the next year as its syllabus and model papers had already been prepared.

“I don’t think the plan of introducing ES study in schools is feasible because it involves different complexities at various levels.

ES is a vast subject. Projects like this are scraped once the incumbent government changes,” an official in the KP education department revealed.

Dr Hibullah said that a complete ES manual for KP schools under German sponsored programme had also been in the process of being completed which would be sent for review to the provincial environment department and then it would be implemented and incorporated in school syllabus through KP education department.

Prof Dr Fazal Rahim Marwat Chairman Text Board Peshawar told Dawn that KP education department has already signed an MoU with Bacha Khan Trust Educational Fund (BKTEF) under which an environment study would be taught in 70 BKTEF and public sector schools on experimental basis from next academic session and teachers trained for the purpose will serve as master- trainers for teaching the study in the rest of the KP schools. He said he supported both introduction of environment study and ES specialists in the schools.  “It will integrate both theory and practical that will greatly help our youth realise significance of the subject from a very tender age,” Mr Marwat observed.