KARACHI, June 1: About four million boys and girls of government primary schools in the province, who, along with many other students, went on summer vacation from Thursday, will have to remain without textbooks for at least two and a half months.
Furthermore, about 350,000 girl students of government middle schools did not get scholarship money pertaining to the academic year ending on May 31. They scholarship was set up as an incentive for girls to continue secondary school education.
According to plans of the provincial education department, the textbooks for primary classes, which are distributed free among students, would be made available to them only after the summer vacation. All schools and colleges will reopen on August 16.
However, parents did not appreciate the idea of the Sindh Education Department. They said that it was not only students of government primary schools, but the entire lot of government school students up to Class IX would have to wait for books for another three months.“Should we as members of a developing country afford such kind of luxury,” questioned a citizen, saying that the frequent changes in the academic sessions during the last couple of years had already turned the process of learning messy.
On the issue of delay in delivering Rs1,000 to each student as a 10-month scholarship, effective from August 2005, students and parents noted that the government had never been prompt in paying the amount to the deserving students in time.
A senior officer of the Sindh Textbook Board said that the board, in line with decisions taken at the higher forums, would first prepare free distribution textbooks for students of government schools and would then market books for the secondary school students.
He said the STB would start delivering free distribution books to the Reform Support Unit (RSU) of the Sindh Education department from July 15 and onwards. The delivery would be in parts, keeping in view the storing and onward supply capacity of the RSU, he added.
Last year, many students of government primary schools remained without books even after August.
For this year, the education department has decided to introduce a new system for the distribution of free books among the students of government schools.
This new process has been aimed at cutting on extra channels and bringing efficiency in the distribution system, said a source in the education department.
Instead of handing over the free-distribution books to education departments of the districts, the STB will deliver them to the RSU.
The RSU will in turn facilitate the transfer of these books at each taluka under the supervision of a divisional deputy programme manager and its subsequent delivery from taluka to school level and then to each child, it was further learnt.
Meanwhile, most government and private schools handed over the results of their students’ annual exams on Wednesday, while remaining private schools will release the results to students in a week’s time. Some of the schools also prescribed books to be taught during the new academic session.
Talking to Dawn, the Chief Programme Manager of the RSU, Iqbal Durrani, on Thursday said that orders had already been placed with the STB for supply of textbooks to about 4.2 million students of primary and secondary schools.
In addition to providing books free of cost to government primary school students, the government has also decided to provide free books to students of classes VI to X in the 2006-07 academic session, he said, adding that about 3.3 million sets of books were being prepared for primary class students, while another 0.8 million books were being prepared for secondary school students in the province.
He said Rs609 million would be utilised for free textbooks while Rs357 million would be distributed as stipends among girl students of classes VI to X at the rate of Rs1,000 per year.
He said contrary to previous practices, the Sindh Education Department had decided to distribute the stipends directly by money order through the Pakistan Post Office network.
“We have transferred the stipend money to the post office, while the list of students will be handed over to the post office department in a week or so. And hopefully, the scholarship amount will be entirely delivered to students by the end of June,” he added.
He said that these stipends were previously distributed through the district government’s education department, which was sometime found unsatisfactory.
In the meantime, addressing education officials on Thursday, the Sindh Minister for Education and Literacy, Dr Hamida Khuhro, directed them to ensure the transparent and judicious utilisation of Rs1,871 million allocated for free textbooks, stipend for girls of secondary schools, and School Management Committees (SMC), under the education incentives programme.
The chief programme manager of RSU informed the minister that Rs886 million were to be provided to the SMCs of government primary and secondary schools so they could meet the immediate requirements of schools.
Referring to the plan of extending free textbooks to students up to class X, Dr Hamida said it would also bring a positive impact with regard to the heavy ratio of out-of-school children and the alarmingly high rate of dropouts after primary level.