Speaking at the concluding session of a national education conference in Islamabad on Wednesday, Federal Education Minister Lieutenant General Javed Ashraf Kazi (Retd) outlined some important measures that are to form part of a new policy.
In what is clearly an attempt to create some semblance of uniformity in the public and private sector education systems, the government has decided, he disclosed, to start the academic year for all educational institutions in August, and also to introduce the teaching of English from class one.
While the value of English teaching cannot be underestimated, it remains a moot question whether it is advisable to begin it so early, especially in the rural areas where most teachers are unlikely to be duly trained to do the job.
The bigger challenges, however, relate to high dropout rate at both the primary and secondary school levels and the poor quality of education offered by the government-run schools.
A constant lament in this country has been the low priority that successive governments attached to public sector education. Not to long ago, a State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) study had noted with concern that the budgetary allocations to this sector, at 1.7 percent of the GDP, were the lowest in the whole of South Asia.
The government since has made some increases, but these still fall far short of the UNESCO recommended standard of 4 percent. Little surprise then that the Education Minister said that the dropout rate among primary school children is as high as 45 percent, and that the problem is linked with the lack of basic facilities in government schools.
An idea of how badly lacking these facilities are can be had from the same SBP report. It disclosed that 71 percent of the schools functioned without electricity and hence without fans in the oppressive heat of the summer months, while 57 percent had no toilets, and in 15 percent cases there was no building to protect the students from the vagaries of weather.
A little over half of the schools did not have any boundary walls, which meant the students were free to come and go, as they liked. Given these conditions, those who preferred to go away, never to come back, are not really to blame.
Furthermore, teacher absenteeism is a serious problem, which, in part, maybe attributable to the lack of such basic facilities as a fan or a proper toilet, and also to an ineffective oversight system. Kazi delivered the good news that this situation was to be reformed, and that the government has allocated Rs 1.75 billion for the provision of basic amenities to all public sector schools.
It is also expected to implement the conference recommendations regarding the revival of school inspectorates at district level, appointment of teachers purely on merit basis, institutionalisation of in-service training for the teaching staff, and performance linked system of grade promotions.
The Education Minister also said that new curricula and textbooks would be introduced in order to fulfil the requirements of good education. That indeed is a major challenge for the ministry, not because there is dearth of duly qualified people to perform the task, but because it would require reversing the changes that were made during the decade of General Zia's misrule.
It was during that time that genuine knowledge was strongly discouraged and obscurantist ideas promoted to serve his regime's political purposes. His unsavoury legacy has lived on through an unreconstructed education establishment. It remains to be seen how far the new textbooks are to go in inculcating quest of knowledge in the young minds.
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