PESHAWAR, June 4: Every fifth high and higher secondary school in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province has no science laboratory and teachers in these institutions teach theories to their students without conducting proper demonstrations and experiments.
Out of 2,059 high and higher secondary schools across the province, the government has established science laboratories in 1,636 schools only, according to official data available with Dawn.
“The administrations of 423 schools with no science laboratories have purchased some necessary equipment used in experiments just to throw dust in the eyes of students,” educationists say.
During a visit to a high school in Gulshan Rehman Colony, located at a distance of some three kilometres from Frontier House Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, this scribe saw no science laboratory. “Established in 1998, the government has failed to set up a science laboratory in the school,” a teacher said.
In the early three years after its upgradation to high school, he said, the science students of grade 1X and X had been taken for experiments to the Deh Bahader High School, some two kilometres away, he added. “Then the government provided funds for purchasing necessary equipment used in experiments instead of establishing a proper science laboratory,” he said. Three cupboards placed in a dark room, hardly 7x6, were shown to this scribe by a group of teachers saying: “It is our science laboratory.”
At the end of the academic year, teachers said, they opened the cupboards and demonstrated to students sometimes in the open and sometimes in a classroom.
“Yes, there is a big difference in learning through experiments conducted in the science laboratory and a classroom or some other place. The students focus on experiments in science laboratory while they have been found disperse while experimenting in the place other than laboratory,” they said.
The teachers added that they demanded of government time and again to establish a science laboratory but in vain.
A science teacher said that developed countries had been stressing on more activity-based learning instead of theories.
Unfortunately, he said, even science education was theoretical in most of the schools because the teachers paid little attention to experiments despite having science laboratories.
“If you have no science laboratory and can’t conduct experiments and proper practical demonstrations then there is no difference between the students of arts and science,” he said.
He said that most of the principals and headmasters of the schools were from the social sciences group and they were unable to understand the importance of laboratory for students of science group.
The result of the experiments conducted without science laboratory was often incorrect, he said. “Without experiments and science laboratory, the output of science students will be zero,” he said.
Elementary and Secondary Education Additional Director Rafiq Khattak, when contacted, said that the schools upgraded to high and higher secondary level under Annual Development Programme (ADP) had all facilities including science laboratories.
Actually the problem was in the schools upgraded within the current budget, he said. Every year, he said, government constructed additional rooms and science laboratories under the ADP.