Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The failure of the successive governments to establish new educational institution in last 10 years has resulted in mushroom growth of private schools as their number increased to over 1,000 in the federal capital alone.

According to the information available with Daily Times, currently 2.1 million students, including around one million male and 1.1 million female students, are enrolled in 423 public-sector educational institutions in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT). Both rural and urban areas fall in jurisdiction of the ICT.

Out of a total of 423 institutions, 391 are Islamabad Model Schools of primary, middle and higher secondary levels while the number of Islamabad Model Colleges of HSSC to postgraduate level is 12 besides 20 Islamabad Model Colleges.

The Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) is the entity which monitors all these 423 institutions in the ICT.

According to the figures available, average enrollment of students with each FDE institution is around 500, which is much higher than the original capacity of the each institution. It needs to build around 50 more educational institutions in the ICT to fulfill the gaps.

Similarly, the FDE is facing acute shortage of staff particularly the teaching staff in its institutions as, according to the FDE official record, it employs a total of 9,663 teachers, both male and female, against different cadres.

A senior official who deals with administrative affairs at the FDE said on the condition of anonymity that the available teaching strength is quite inadequate to cater to a huge number of students.He said the existing number of public schools and colleges is also unable to entertain the ever increasing population of the ICT.

“Each government made tall claims but did nothing practically to establish new institutions in order to ease burden on the existing facilities,” he said, adding that consequently a large number of students each year turn to private schools to continue their studies.

As per Private Educational Institutions Regulatory Authority (PEIRA) official data, currently there are around 2.6 million students enrolled in 1,242 registered private educational institutions in the ICT. A PEIRA official stated that apart from registered institutions, around 700 private institutions are working without registration with the authority. This malpractice was also admitted by a senior official of PEIRA at a recent meeting of a Senate standing committee.

The last government of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) planned building new schools in the ICT but the plan remained only in the official files. Besides a huge number of students enrolled in private schools, a large number of children are still out of schools.

Minister for Federal Education and Professional Training Shafqat Mehmood was informed by the FDE authorities at a recent meeting that around 30,000 children in the capital were out of school. In response, the minster assured that the government had already made plan for bringing 25 million out-of-school children to schools across the country and that 30,000 children in Islamabad would be enrolled in schools on a priority basis.

The shortage of teaching and non-teaching staff is another major issue. Around 2,500 teaching and 1,700 non-teaching positions are reportedly lying vacant in ICT since last many years as FDE did not recruit anyone since 2009.

Interestingly, the FDE has around 1,800 daily-wage employees working in different institution since 2009. They are not being paid since last six months nor being regularised despite availability of a large number of vacancies.In 2011, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government set up a committee under the chairmanship of Syed Khurshid Shah for regularisation of the contractual employees which regularised thousands of contractual employees in various federal government departments. However, the case of FDE employees is still unresolved.

The FDE is running without a head. “We have taken up these issues with education minister and he assured us that those will be resolved on a priority basis,” Director Model Colleges Dr Tariq Masood told Daily Times. “Change, however, is a gradual process. It takes time,” he added.