Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) will conduct a survey on the quality of education in Pakistan, to be conducted in the rural areas of Pakistan. The survey will be the first of its kind in Pakistan which will be based on the opinion of parents of the children living in the rural areas of Pakistan, said research fellow in the department of Economics at University of Oxford Dr Monazza Aslam while talking to Business Recorder on Tuesday.
Monazza Aslam is also the trainer of four-day national preparatory workshop for citizens volunteering to act as focal persons for ASER Survey 2010. The workshop was organised by South Asia Forum for Education Development (SAFED) and Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA). Director ITA Bela Raza Jami also spoke on the occasion. Monaaza said that this survey would be conducted with the technical support of ASER, India. She said that ASER is an effort by citizens to bring out important and timely information about children's learning from the villages of our country.
She also said that it is an assessment exercise that will lead to concrete action both by the governments and the citizens. She stressed the need of effective strategy, which would not only focus solely on sending more children to school, but also enhance quality of schooling. "If today's children are to become tomorrows earning adults, we need to know how they are learning today to ensure that that they are able to achieve their full potential tomorrow," she said. She said that tools used in the survey should be reliable and valid.
ASER Centre, India, research associates Satyam Vyas and Savitri Sharad while talking to Business Recorder said that after the results of their survey, the government of India had acknowledged the results and started working for the betterment of the education system in India. They said that ASER is a movement, which is based on community participation.
About the impact of ASER in India they said that ASER referred to in many national and state policy documents like Indian economic survey. They also said that in 2008-9 at least half a dozen states, governments use ASER or ASER like tools in schools to help teachers understand and track learning improvements in their class and school. They said that in India, government national achievement test findings are being released faster as a result of ASER. In India, they said that this approach has been tried in other sectors such as water, livelihood and fund flow.
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