Daily Times

The great French writer, Victor Marie Hugo, once wrote, “He who opens a school door, closes a prison.” There are hundreds and thousands of schools in Sindh but what these schools are and what they produce is a matter of great distress. Cheating in examinations, mismanagement, ghost teachers, unavailability of the school syllabus, missing basic infrastructure, schools as headquarters of waderas (feudal lords) and a number of schools on record but absent on the ground — it may surprise many but all this is normal practice in Sindh. The output is: there is an army of certified and non-certified illiterate people in the province holding either a certificate or a pistol to beg for a job or to make a living out of the bullet. So what do they do when the number of irrational minds grow? Crime becomes an easy way of living. The number of extremists grows like fire. Ill-minded people encapsulated with the typical feudal mindset subjugate the large population of the province.

The absence of quality education from the public as well private schools has left deep scars. If the wounds are not healed, they will become the cause of a fatal disease. How far has this epidemic fatal disease spread? Education in Sindh is mind-numbing and heart-wrenching. Not that the concerned authorities are unaware but education as a priority remains at the lowest for our elected provincial representatives. The Sindh Minister for Education, Mr Nisar Khuhro, announced during an Assembly session that 11,000 schools, mostly primary, are still either shut or non-functional in the province. In another instance, he admitted thousands of fake appointments in the education department. Furthermore, he opined that there are 43,000 primary schools and 150,000 teachers, and for that the government of Sindh is paying Rs 110 billion in salaries to them. These are all very recent statements in which the minister has highlighted the bleak situation. The secondary sources are mind blowing: Alif Ailan, a Pakistani alliance for education reform led by a communications campaign, suggests that there are 12 million children, aged five to 16 in Sindh, of whom 50 percent are out of school. Some 77 percent of functional schools are deemed to be in an unsatisfactory condition in terms of infrastructure. In terms of learning outcomes, 59 percent of class five students are unable to read a story fluently in Urdu or Sindhi while 71 percent cannot perform simple two-digit division. One wonders why, after paying billions of rupees, education in Sindh is in a state of the doldrums.

The above situation raises serious questions about the ability of the provincial education department to handle the education system. Not enough has been done and the results are not favourable, especially against the budget spent by the department. In such a situation, political parties in Pakistan hardly take education emphatically as done by the newly established Awami Jamhuri Party (AJP). The AJP is on foot to walk hundreds of kilometres for the cause, ‘Save education, prosper Sindh’ (taleem bachayo, Sindh sanwaryo). No doubt, the party has political objectives to achieve but the cause is one that should be taken seriously. It is ironic that the long march has remained conspicuously quiet and neglected after being on the road for more than a month now. Apparently, the media as well as the local people, including civil society members, seem least concerned. Maybe the media is more interested in bombs, bullets, killings and rapes.

The AJP, formed in August 2008 by political workers, writers, retired government officials and educationists from Sindh, started the long march from Larkana and Sukkur simultaneously on March 16, 2014. There are men, women and children walking, chanting and holding placards to pressurise the concerned authorities to make education the topmost priority.

The long march has reached Hyderabad and will culminate in Karachi on Saturday, April 19, 2014 where the marchers will present their demands to the members of the Sindh Assembly and the government of Sindh. The demands are to impose an education emergency for at least 10 years, declare at least one boys and one girls high school as a model school (similar to Daanish schools in Punjab) in each taluka headquarters: 262 schools in 131 talukas, to ensure the maximum utility of 217 technical institutions, announce needs-based technical courses and professional training for the students of Sindh, to establish the Sindh Education Management Service for teachers’ proper future planning, professional training and modern means of teaching, to publicly display the names of all the teachers on the official websites to curb ghost teachers, ensure 100 percent enrolment and modernise the syllabus on a scientific basis.

It is the right time for the government to address issues and put their sincere efforts into bringing about change — and change is only possible through education.

The writer studies Anthropology at the Australian National University and tweets @rizchanna