LAYYAH, Dec 28: Commitment of teachers and education department officials to achieve maximum enrollment of students exposes when a study in the Layyah district shows some 20 per cent dropout of students from 1,584 state-run schools.
A new enrollment drive in government schools was launched on the instructions of Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif from June to August under the Universal Primary Enrollment (UPE) programme.
During this drive 257,545 students – 159,728 boys and 97,817 girls -- in different classes were enrolled in mosques, primary, middle, high and higher secondary schools in the district as against 215,381 of the last year enrollment.
To make the drive a success, a special campaign was launched both in print and electronic media by spending millions of rupees from the hard-earned money of tax payers.
Another feature of this drive was to involve parents, NGOs and school management committees for the admission of maximum number of students in schools. This activity was claimed to be a major initiative of the Punjab government in the education sector.
Before the UPE campaign, the total strength of boy students in kachi (prep) class in the district was 20,061 and girl students was 11,303. On August 31, the total boys enrolled in prep class throughout the district were 26,617 and girls were 14,847.
Similarly, the boy students before August were 22,103 and girls were 13,878 and on Aug 31 the boys figure was 22,819 and girls figure was 14,020.
The enrollment of boy students in class 2 was 14,152 and girls’ enrollment was 12,522. This figure for boys raised to 14,555 and for girls to 13,249 on Aug 31.
In class 3, the enrollment of boys before the UPE campaign was 12,393 and girls was 10,839 which increased to 12,584 and 10,947, respectively, on Aug 31.
In class 4, the total boys were 10,671 and girls were 9,452 and this figure after the campaign stood at 10,698 for boys and 9,520 for girls. Similarly, in class 5 the enrollment of boys was 9,372 and girls was 6,743 which increased to 9,407 and 6,772, respectively.
While the total enrollment on Aug 1 in primary classes throughout the district for boys was 88,787 and for girls was 64,737 and this number after hectic a campaign was raised to 96,645 and 70,427, respectively.
Academicians had expressed doubts both on enrollment figures and the seriousness of the district education officers to retain the newly-enrolled students.
The major concern of education watchers was that the vested interests of a majority of teachers would defeat this noble initiative of the chief minister as they remained absent from schools, and many of them had established their own educational academies.
Last week, a briefing was arranged for the education minister by the district monitoring officer about the enrollment drive and dropout rate of students from schools.
The 20 per cent dropout ratio irked the education minister and he reprimanded the education authorities.
The minister expressed his serious concern on the state of affairs of the Layyah Education Department and absenteeism of teachers, especially women teachers, due to which 87 schools were found closed during last month’s inspection of the DMO in Layyah tehsil, Karor and Choubara.
The closure of schools due to persistent absence of teachers is the major cause of surge in dropout rate of students in the district.
Educationist Miss Rubina Qureshi termed this drastic dropout rate a serious setback to the educational reforms of the chief minister.
She was of the opinion that the dropout rate would be more than 30 per cent if a genuine inquiry was conducted.
She demanded punitive action against officials of Layyah education department responsible for wasting millions of rupees in the enrollment drive.