GUJRAT: Ensuring quality and inclusive education for all is not just an obligation for the government as per articles 25-A and 37-B of the Constitution, but is also an integral part of the country’s international commitments under the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and the UN Convention on The Rights of the Child.

As per a 2017-18 report of the provincial government’s Punjab Economic Research Institute, around 7.5 million children between the ages of five and 16 years were out of school in the province alone. The literacy and non-formal basic education department was created in 2002 to provide education to all out-of-school children, including slum dwellers, street children, internally displaced persons, nomads, gypsies, minorities, children in workforce, transgenders, jail inmates, madressah children, Darul Aman residents etc.

This department was operating 13,324 non-formal schools across Punjab with 445,249 students. These one-room schools were mostly functioning in a teacher’s home. Out of these schools, 87 per cent were located in rural areas primarily where no government school existed within a one-kilometre radius and 54pc of the students at these schools were girls, indicating that this segment of the population was the primary beneficiary of this intervention.

For each school, the department had engaged one teacher who taught Urdu, English, mathematics, general knowledge, Islamiat, social studies and general science to six classes under one roof. The monthly salary paid to each teacher was Rs7,000, which was nowhere close the minimum wage of Rs 17,500 fixed by the government.

Each school run by a teacher in his/her home for six subjects for Rs7,000 salary

Rahim Yar Khan, Khanewal and Bahawalpur were the top three districts with the most enrolment in non-formal schools with 18,007, 16,633 and 16,569 students, respectively.

To improve the sorry state of affairs of these schools, parents of some students demanded the honorarium paid to the teachers be increased to Rs10,000 at least to encourage more teachers to open such schools at their homes. The teachers were also not paid utility charges for the electricity bills and provision of clean drinking water to the students.

Furthermore, students brought old sacks, cushions or wooden seats with them to sit on, while the implementation of Covid-19 protocols at these schools could be a daunting task for the authorities concerned as academic activities were set to resume by Sept 30.

A group of teachers engaged with these schools suggested that since their students hailed from poor backgrounds, a free lunch programme could be introduced for them. Currently, the department provided only one copy and a pencil to each student at the start of a new class, but that was insufficient for three to six subjects.

The teachers said if the government did not have resources to provide even the basic facilities to the 13,324 teachers and 450,000 students, the least it could do was exempt the department from lengthy procedures for engaging non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and foreign donors willing to invest in this sector.

They added that for signing of any memorandum of understanding (MoU) with an NGO or foreign donor, a No-Objection Certificate was required from the home department, vetting from law department and a final approval from the provincial cabinet; the process typically takes months or even years to materialise.

Meanwhile, the teachers of these schools have not been paid their salaries since June and have demanded their dues since the schools were going to open.

Literacy and Non-formal Basic Education Secretary Sumaira Samad told Dawn that the department had been in a project mode since its establishment and would now be structured permanently, however the teachers and these non-formal schools would remain part of a project. The teachers were receiving Rs6,000 as honorarium and Rs1,000 for running expenses of the school and had to work for four hours from their homes, so considering the wages of teachers in private schools, the amount was not less, she added.

However, the department was considering increasing the honorarium, she said, adding that most of the teachers were not even graduates and the women teachers often quit jobs after marriages, so they were being paid for the limited hours they put in.

Ms Samad further said that the teachers were getting their salaries despite the closure of schools due to Covid-19 pandemic, but their pending salaries would be paid now as the budget of these schools was part of a project that had to be revised every year. The department was releasing the payments as the government had to earlier divert the funds to fight the pandemic, she claimed.

She admitted to the procedural difficulties in signing MoUs with NGOs, saying that even then the department was engaged with Unicef, Japan International Cooperation Agency, Allied International and other NGOs that were supporting the project.

She claimed that enrolment in non-formal schools had been the highest in 2019 in the last five years and the department was making efforts to upgrade the project to attract more out-of-school students.

Published in Dawn, September 28th, 2020