Daily Times

KHAIRPUR: The Sindh Education Alliance (SEA) and Alif Ailaan, a prominent non-profit organisation that seeks to ensure quality education for every Pakistani, on Friday convened a multi-party convention to examine the causes of current educational affairs in the district of Khairpur.

Reportedly, the Sindh United Party’s (SUP) candidate for provincial assembly seat PS-26 Fayz Khameesani, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) candidate for PS-27 Molana Abdullah Abbasi, independent candidate for PS-26 Shehnaza Shaikh, advocate Mirzan Nasir, youth activists and civil society attended the convention.

The representatives also recommended educational reforms to improve academic standards.

They notified three influential factors contributing towards alarming situation of education being delivered to the students of government schools in Khairpur including gender disparity, insufficient schools and low-quality education.

According to the Pakistan District Education Rankings 2017, released by Alif Ailaan, Khairpur ranked 104th in the country and 15th at provincial level, while the ranking is based on education score (measured by learning score, retention score and gender parity score).

The Khairpur’s retention score and learning score had been determined as 44.1 percent and 31.86 percent respectively.

Out of the total 3,290 public schools in the district, 2,966 schools were found to be delivering only primary-level education.

Meanwhile, the lack of schools beyond primary-level education determines the reason of students dropping out of the government schools.

For every 16 primary schools in Khairpur, there is only one school above primary level. This means that most children who pass Class 5 do not have opportunity to continue their education except that very few of them get admission in a private school. The large out of school population of Khairpur is a direct product of this failure.

On the top of that, the gender disparity even worsens the scenario since there are only 786 primary schools for girls as compared to 2,198 for boys, and the difference is further accentuated at higher education.

Moreover, thousands of schools are deprived of basic school infrastructure despite of the fact that repeated promises were made by government officials, politicians and successive education ministers.

According to the report, 1,148 schools have no electricity supply, 1,223 schools have no clean drinking water, and 933 schools have no boundary walls while 525 schools have no toilets. Only 48 schools in the whole district have science labs while 3,224 schools do not even have a library.

The report further proposed certain measures to improve education standard including more enrolment of girls, provision of child-friendly environment in schools and resolution of infrastructural issues on priority basis.

Furthermore, hundreds of partially or permanently dysfunctional, shelter-less and one-room schools need effective rehabilitation.

Later, the participants agreed on a charter of demands presented by the representatives of Alif Ailaan and SEA to the electing candidates for upgrading academic standards and provision of essential resources to the schools in their respective constituencies.

Published in Daily Times, July 14^th 2018.