KARACHI, Jan 13: Sindh has 38,885 primary schools in the public sector, of which 13,537 are without buildings, 5,901 schools have one room only, 12,791 are with two rooms, 1,131 with three rooms, 1,173 with four rooms, and 1,197 have five rooms.

Most of the schools lack basic facilities as 13,537 schools are without electricity, 5,901 are without water, 12,791 without toilets and 1,131 schools have no boundary walls, says a report prepared by Sindh education department.

According to the report, the number of the school-going children, aged between 5 to 9 years, in the province has been estimated at 4,852,771, that includes 2,564,376 male and 2,288,395 female children. However, the enrolment of children in the total 38,885 primary schools— 32,909 male and 5,976 female schools— stands at 2,226,338, that includes 1,444,004 male and only 782,334 female students.

The figures show that the participation of school-age children is hardly 45.9 per cent, as 2,626,433 children, including 1,120,372 male and 1,506,061 female students, are still out of schools. The strength of teachers at these schools is 101,049 that includes 73,505 male and 27,544 female teachers, says the report.

There is a big gap among the primary, middle, secondary and the higher secondary level schools, as the number of the middle schools all over the province is 2,073 only, of which 1,475 are for male students and 598 for the female students. The number of secondary schools is 1,447, including 1,042 male and 407 female schools while the higher secondary schools and colleges are much less as the statistics show that their number is only 330 that include 206 male and 124 female institutions all over the province.

The enrolment at middle level is 521,199 students only, including 312,042 male and 209,157 female students against the 2,854,278 middle level population of children, the report says. Similarly, the enrolment at secondary level is 2,95,144 students, including 184,422 male and 110,722 female students, against the secondary level population of 12,44,609 students, it adds. Thus 23,33,079 children at middle level and 9,49,465 children at secondary level remain out of schools, according to the report.

The number of students who could reach the higher secondary or college level has been reported only 3,90,386 that include 223,698 male and 166,688 female students.

The report says that the standard of education at government schools is poor which is evident from the fact that during the year 2002-03, the number of students enrolled in 20 selected colleges of Karachi from government schools was 640 only, out of 9,763 and the remaining 8,473 students were from private schools.

It adds that out of total allocation of Rs19,313 million for the education sector, Rs16,085 million are spent on salaries, Rs1,628 million on non-salary account and only Rs1,600 million on development side.—PPI