Daily Times

LARKANA: 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 ‘worrying’ educational state of affairs in Larkana and propose effective recommendations for its improvement, particularly in government-run schools.

Reportedly, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) member Khursheed Ahmed Junejo, the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) members Moazam Ali Khan Abbasi and Mehtab Akbar Rashdi, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) member Rashid Mahmood Soomro, Awami Tehreek Pakistan (ATP) member Hafiz Gul Hassan, an independent candidate Liaquat Mirani, Sindh United Party (SUP) member Jagdesh Ahuja, Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen (MWM) member Sabir Abro, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) member Javed Buledi, youth activists and members of civil society actively participated in the convention.

The participants highlighted three influential factors contributing towards alarming academic state of affairs in Larkana including gender disparity, insufficient schools and low-quality education.

According to the Pakistan District Education Rankings 2017, released by Alif Ailaan, Larkana ranked 87th in the country and 10th at provincial level, while the ranking is measured on the basis of education score (includes learning score, retention score and gender parity score).

The Larkana’s retention score and learning score had been determined as 44.58 percent and 34.81 percent respectively. The SEA chairman Junaid Dahar expressed grave concerns over the retention score of Larkana and termed it as ‘a worst score in Sindh.’

The ‘increasing’ school dropout rate has been determined as an alarming 25 percent of the total 32,813 students in class 1 declining to 24,575 students in class 5.

Only 13,092 students were enrolled in class 6, the dropout rate of 47 percent while students shift from primary to middle level as most of the schools were found to be delivering only primary-level education.

According to the report, MMA’s Soomro asserted that out of the total 1,158 schools in the district of Larkana, 14 percent have no clean drinking water, 31 percent have no electricity supply, 21 percent have no boundary walls or lack basic infrastructure while many of them even have no toilets. He vowed to bring educational reforms, if he gets elected.

The GDA’s Rashdi further criticised the provincial government of Sindh for spending foreign aids on other state institutions rather than education sector. She revealed that most of the teachers were not skilled enough to teach the students appropriately.

“Students need a creative mind for attempting examinations on their own,” she said adding that copy culture prevails across Sindh while education has been commercialized in the whole country.

“The poor are unable to acquire quality education or secure their basic rights. There is no merit based system left in Pakistan,” she said.

Furthermore, Moazzam said that 80 schools in Larkana were shelter-less, many of them were either partially or permanently dysfunctional, and out of the total 73 higher secondary-level schools, science labs were available in only 27 of them while 1,121 schools do not even have libraries.

“Education plays a vital role for building a nation,” he said while demanding an immediate effective rehabilitation process for improving schools’ structure and resources.

Published in Daily Times, July 18^th 2018.