DEPARTMENT for International Development`s (DFID) special representative on education in Pakistan Sir Michael Barber last week launched his essay on education reforms in Punjab presenting “good side of the news.” It undermines the enormity of problems currently being faced by the Punjab school education department ranging from low-enrolment, high dropout rate, multi-grade teaching to low learning outcomes.

The essay “The good news from Pakistan” launched at Lahore University of Management Sciences in collaboration with the DFID discussed Punjab Schools Reform Roadmap and explained improvement in access, raising learning levels and enhancing the governance and accountability of the delivery system.

The essay, written by Sir Michael in his personal capacity, has tried to paint a rosy picture while ignoring ground realities. At occasions, he has admitted, “The task I had come to do was still to be done. Pakistan’s education emergency was, in economic terms, the equivalent of a permanent flood.”

The essay presents rising graphs in every sector based on the data provided by respective districts on monthly basis. He, however, himself admitted at the launch that different districts did supply exaggerated or ill-informed data to the Roadmap team. Citing an example, Sir Michael said, “The EDO (Education) in D.G. Khan reported that there was no out-of-school child in a remote village but our team during a visit to the village found 80 out-of-school children.”

Sir Michael must have faced a similar situation of receiving misleading information based on a local mentality “All is well” when he reports in his essay that 90.9 per cent of government schools have all facilities including functioning electricity, drinking water, toilet and boundary walls. He also claimed that 92 per cent schools would be provided with all missing facilities by the end of March 2013. Besides extensive surveys, random visits to about 100 schools in rural as well as urban areas out of over 55,000 schools could challenge this claim and reveal the appalling facts on ground.

Sir Michael, however, is right in saying that the students and teachers’ attendance rate has increased from 82.8 per cent and 80.7 per cent in August 2011 to 92.1 per cent and over 90 per cent in December 2012, respectively. Stating that these figures mean one million extra students are attending their schools every day, Sir Michael added that these improvements were largely a result of much-improved management.

Sir Michael’s essay reports that 15 districts have over 90 per cent enrolment of 5-9 years of age children, while 12 districts have children enrolment from 86 per cent to 90 per cent, five districts have 80-85 per cent children’s enrolment while only four districts in South – Muzaffargarh, D.G. Khan, Rahim Yar Khan and Rajanpur – have school-going age children ratio standing at 77, 72, 72 and 60 per cent, respectively. In 2013, he stressed that the Punjab school education department should focus on South Punjab, rural areas and girls in particular.

With regard to enrolment drive, Sir Michael said the situation was too critical in terms of universal primary education and claimed the December 2012 Nielson data showed Punjab had made progress. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Punjab 2012 survey, which is available to the media, reports that the prevalence of out-of-school children in Punjab continued to stand as high as 16 per cent in 2012 as survey reported in 2011.

It may be mentioned that the school education department would never be able to check the dropout without building new schools. At present, there are 43,000 primary schools while the number of middle and high schools were as low as 7,900 and 4,500, respectively.

With regard to teacher quality, Sir Michael stated that it was central to the roadmap and was most difficult to shift as they had ingrained habits and cultural norms that were very hard to change. He said teacher quality was monitored by 4,000 District Teacher Educators (DTEs) and announced that by April 2013 (beginning of new academic session) teachers would have revised and much improved textbooks aligned to lesson plans and a monthly coaching session with a trained DTE. “This lays the foundation for continuous improvement in teaching quality which was previously eluded in Punjab,” he said.

At essay’s launch, Punjab school education secretary Aslam Kamboh gave a sweeping statement that the PML-N government led by Shahbaz Sharif recruited all teachers purely on merit, while the respective governments during the last 10 years prior to Shahbaz Sharif government did not recruit teachers on merit. Both statements were doubtful, different launch participants said.

The prevalent quality of teaching could be gauged from the fact that the Punjab Examination Commission (PEC) announced the Class-V and VIII results on March 30 – declaring all those students pass, who secured at least 20 per cent and 25 per cent marks in each subject, respectively. The Class-V students were also given a concession and declared all those candidates passed, who were not able to attain even 20 per cent marks in one subject. While the world is raising pass marks benchmarks, the PEC supervised by the school education department has tried to hoodwink all stakeholders by showing 93 per cent and 86 per cent results, respectively.

This situation verifies the ASER Punjab 2012 survey report that a large number of school-going age children, who possess extremely low learning outputs, are progressing and studying in higher classes in the province.

The survey had reported that almost 49 per cent of Class-IV students were not able to read Class-II level story in Urdu, while almost 43 per cent Class-III students could not even read Class-II level sentences.

Almost 73 per cent Class-III and 39 per cent Class-V students could not read Class-II English sentences. Similarly, 44 per cent Class-V, 32 per cent Class-VI and 24 per cent Class-VII students could not do Class-III level three-digit division.

The Sir Michael’s essay has also conveniently ignored the serious issue of multi-grade teaching in public schools owing to shortage of classrooms in existing schools. The ASER survey had reported that 36 per cent and 14 per cent of the surveyed public schools were imparting multi-grade teaching as Class-II and Class-VIII students were sitting with other classes.

In his chapter “Priorities for 2013 and beyond”, Sir Michael has stated that this year is an election year and no one is sure of the outcome. He rightly stresses that there is a need to build cross-party support for the continuation of Punjab Schools Reform Roadmap.— mansoormalik173@hotmail.com