Improving primary education

The brightening of prospects of improving the primary and secondary education in the country, to which US Ambassador to Pakistan Nancy Powell excitedly referred while speaking as the chief guest at the district improvement grants award ceremony, in Karachi, the other day, will certainly be taken as a breath of fresh air.
The function, held under the auspices of the Education Sector Reform Assistance (ESRA) Programme, marked the first round of disbursement of district school improvement grants worth Rs 37.5 million among the Nazims of eight selected districts of Sindh and Balochistan.
This should help inspire hope of increasing emphasis on long-awaited improvement not only in selected schools, as such, but also in the overall approach to imparting education in its entirety.
The assistance, based on grants directly given to the district governments from the first of its kind contribution from the USAID of $100 million besides allocations from other donors, will support implementation of district improvement plans focusing schools.
It will be noted that education having remained, unfortunately, the most neglected sector of planned development in this country, efforts hurriedly made for removing distortions, from time to time, continued leaving a great deal to be desired, more so at the primary level of education.
Reference, in this regard, may especially be made to linking primary education also to plans for eradication of illiteracy, in one way or the other. Needless to point out, the pursuit of this kind of an approach, though resulting in setting up of primary schools in increasing numbers, both in the urban and rural areas, is mostly defeating its purpose.
This should become all the more evident from too many reported cases of schools in existence without teachers or insufficient number of them. Similarly, there have been instances of schools opened in well-built and well-equipped buildings, but without students or teachers, or both, in required numbers.
All these contradictions and deficiencies, put together, will leave little to doubt about haphazard nature of primary education planning in Pakistan. No doubt, there may also be some exceptions to such a weird phenomenon, but like a lonely lark not making the summer, the overall situation thus resulting, should call for urgent efforts for improving the whole system from an objectively planned scientific strategy.
For one thing, education, essentially, implies imparting and acquiring of knowledge through teaching and learning, especially at a school, as it involves a process by which a person begins only to learn, but also how to learn.
It is around this approach that ESRA Programme will appear to have been built, that is, making the best of what is already there.
As Nancy Powell rightly observed, improving education necessarily requires policy changes at the national level, saying what actually happens in the classrooms is most important.
Moreover, taking into consideration all that goes in enhancing the appeal of education, at primary level in particular, there can be no disputing her argument that changes in the classroom can help, among other things, increase enrolment levels and reduce the dropout rates, the combination of problems presently thwarting effort for expanding primary education in the country. It, surely, can attract more girls to schools, as they have been shunning it for various reasons, to increasing dismay of planners though.
The same can be said about the stress she laid on improved monitoring and supervision to ensure that the children have quality teachers all along in the classroom.
One hopes that the district improvement grants now being awarded can go a long way toward helping the district officials make the kind of improvements that will attract more youngsters to the schools by involving the parents and children in schooling.