Daily Times

The Annual Status of Education Report of 2019 paints a bleak picture of rural classroom learning quality of the whole country. Over the decades, the rural school has been grappling with missing facilities, ghost units, untrained teachers, delivery of confused concepts to students, lack of teaching sources and so on. The report explains the quality of education of rural districts in Pakistan where the 41 per cent of surveyed fifth graders could not exhibit basic literacy skills as they failed to read a story in Urdu while 45 per cent of them were unable to read sentences in English. The report was compiled and launched by Idara-i-Taleem-i-Aagahi. It is based on a survey conducted in 155 rural districts covering 92,008 households. When grade five students cannot read a second grade level story in Urdu, Sindhi or Pashto, and second grade level sentences in English, it warrants an education emergency in the country. Not only literacy, a similar dismal situation is seen in basic arithmetic skills.

As per the report 84 per cent of third graders could not read first grade level sentences, and 43 per cent of fifth grade students could not do two digit division. The chronic issue of out of school children remains the same. The report said 17 per cent of the children were out of school in 2019 whereas a survey of 20 urban centres across Pakistan found that just six per cent of children were out of school.

Pakistan is rural in nature with more than 60 per cent of the population and their livelihoods linked with rural resources. Ironically, whenever any education related measure is launched, the centre of activities remains cities, only for media glare and a general tendency to lure urban voters with development works. The report also pointed out missing facilities in schools: 39 per cent of primary schools lack usable water facilities while 41 per cent have no access to usable toilets and 56 per cent have never had computer labs. These missing facilities are real and most of the allocations are consumed by them. It is however high time that the government focuses on the quality of teaching. A trained teacher can cope with missing facilities by using local resources. But the greatest benefit of professionally trained teachers is bringing conceptual clarity in the minds of students. *