RAWALPINDI, Sept 12: Education experts have blamed government’s lack of interest for the poor performance of schools in major cities of the Punjab.

A latest provincial government report showed public sector schools in the major cities performing poorly.

Under the Education Sector Reforms Programme, the performance of schools in every district, from the primary to higher secondary level, is documented by a monitoring and implementation team after every quarter of the year.

According to the April-July report released on September 1, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan and Gujranwala failed to get a place among the districts with the best performance in the education sector.

Rawalpindi even fell from the third best performing district to 24th in the province.

According to the report, Nankana Sahib stood on the top followed by Chiniot, Okara, Bahawalnagar and Faisalabad while Lahore ranked 26th, Multan 17th and Gujranwala 36th.

The report blamed shortage of facilities, under-utilisation of the funds, failure to distribute free textbooks among the students and absence of teachers for the poor performance of the schools.

When contacted for comments, renowned educationist Dr A. H. Nayyar said the indicators of the report apparently focused on the attendance of teachers, students and missing facilities.

“It is not necessary that the government educational institutions in big cities or districts have better facilities with 100 per cent attendance of teachers and students. But the drop-out ratio is increasing due to multiple factors, including presence of private schools.”

He added that in small districts, it was easy for the local administration and the education department to manage things in small-scale and at least improve the attendance.

He said the government had to give incentives to the teachers and administration to improve the performance of the institutions.

“Though the quality of education will not improve through these measures, the presence of teachers and students will be ensured,” he said.

“Education at the school level is free in the country and the government should focus on the quality of education. It should improve the capacity building of teachers so that they impart quality education to the next generation,” he said.

Abbas Rashid, another educationalist, said the quality of education in the government schools was falling due to the lack of interest on part of the government.

“In big cities, a majority of people send their children to private schools because they provide quality education. For the remaining children, who belong to the poor class, the government is not ready to spend money to improve the quality.”

He added: “In small cities, people have no other option than sending their children to government schools due to absence of private institutions. This puts pressure on the local government to improve the facilities in the schools.”

He said though there was a very small difference between the standard of education imparted in private and government schools, the private institutes performed better due to their commercial interests.

“Successive governments have failed to provide basic facilities in the schools even in big cities forcing the people to move to private institutes,” said Ilyas Qureshi, a professor at the Asghar Mall College, while talking to Dawn.

He said the performance of small districts was better as the people there had no other option. In big cities, on the other hand, the competition is tough and people want to send their children to renowned private educational institutes.

He said there was a shortage of teachers in the government schools and those who worked in these institutions get no incentives for their good performance. “If a teacher performs well the government should give him incentives. But instead the district coordination officer and the executive district officer are given the credit and incentives if a district gets good ranking,” he said.

Talking to Dawn, Punjab Minister for Education Rana Mashhood Ahmad Khan blamed the caretaker provincial government for the poor performance of schools in big cities. He said the caretakers made massive reshuffling in the education department.

“During the last four months and election days, teachers and government officials did not pay attention on their temporary postings and the result was not up to the mark,” he said.

In reply to a question, the minister said small cities were not as much affected by the transfers and postings of teachers compared to the big cities.

He also said compared to rural areas the urban areas’ monitoring was very strict.

The minister also said there was some flaws in the monitoring system but the government would improve it. “The government is working on improving the education standards and facilities in the government schools,” he said.

He added that the next survey of the government schools would be different as the government had provided more funds for the missing facilities and also launched a campaign to increase enrollment in schools.