Even in Peshawar, which is the gateway to the tribal belt, as many as 70 children are packed into a single classroom at government-run schools. And poor teacher-student ratio is contributing to school drop out.
Every year in Pakistan around 200,000 students pass their intermediate examination but only 40,000 of them are able to go for university education. Why? Fielding the question, Mohammad Ali Jinnah University (MAJU) President Prof Dr Zubair Shaikh offers an interesting take. Pakistan, he says, doesn’t have enough universities. The country has in all 180 universities and they cannot take the 160,000 youth knocking at their doors year after year.
Put simply, the education scene in Pakistan is depressing as much at the college level as at the primary and secondary levels. The youth are naturally drifting away from the mainstream or to quote Dr Shaikh, “the youth are pushed to move towards wrong path and to become bad names for the society”.
Cut to the situation in the tribal districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Only one-fifth of the girls enrolled in government schools in seven districts of the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) continue their education from preparatory class till Class V, says an official report on government educational institutions.
The 102-page report has been compiled by the Education Management Information System (EMIS) under the directorate of education. It shows that almost 73 per cent students — 69pc boys and 79pc girls — quit schools during the early years of education. The situation at the middle and secondary school levels is no less discouraging; dropout rate of girls at these stages is 50pc,
The dropout rate in the militancy-affected North Waziristan district is 63pc (73pc among girls), which is the highest among the seven districts.
The education scene in Pakistan is depressing as much at the college level as at the primary and secondary levels. The youth are naturally drifting away from the mainstream.
The tribal districts have 5,890 schools in the public sector with a total enrolment of 677,157 students. Most of these schools do not have electricity, drinking water facility and toilets. Only 43pc schools have electricity, 45.2pc have drinking water facility, 45pc have toilets and 70pc schools have boundary walls, the EMIS study shows.
Teacher shortage is chronic to tribal schools. In fact the number of teachers in public sector educational institutions is on the decline. Total number of teachers in schools was 20,709 in 2009-10 which has reduced to 18,621 in 2017-18.
“There is shortage of teachers and other technical staff in tribal districts due to slow recruitment process,” an official dealing with the education sector in the area was quoted as saying in the Dawn newspaper.
He explained thus: Nearly 5,000 seats of teachers and technical staff (lab assistants) in the schools had been lying vacant with an unofficial ban on the recruitment of teachers. Requests to fill up the teacher vacancies have gone unheeded. As a consequence, student-teacher ratio is 1/59 at the primary school level. The provincial government had fixed teacher-students ratio at 1/40, with six teachers and six classrooms for primary schools. But most primary schools have two rooms and one veranda. Teachers are also said to be contributing to the high dropout rate.
“Non-qualified and outdated teachers could not teach new syllabus designed by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Textbook Board. This has led to more school drop outs”, a teacher remarked. .
Every year 160,000 youth are denied access to higher education in Pakistan as the 180 universities in the country have a very limited intake capacity.
Says an education official: “Unfortunately, it seems tribal districts are still passing through the 1940s as over 100 students are taught in two small rooms by two teachers”.
In the Swat district, for instance, some 700 boys are crammed into six classrooms at the severely understaffed Malokabad School in Mingora. Two teachers jump from class to class, with each handling scores of children in each class. And there are no toilets. Students are made to study out in the open — in the courtyard or the rooftop.
This is the same district that made international headlines a decade ago when the TTP took control and banned girls’ education. Malala Yousafzai, the global face for girl’s education once lived and went to school in this very district. And it is the home district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Mahmood. The story is not too different in the more urbanised centres such as Peshawar where as many as 70 children are packed into a single classroom at government-run schools.
The situation in the most backward, Baluchistan is no different. An estimated 1,800 state-run primary, middle and high schools in the province are identified as non-functional. Another 2,200 schools are without shelter and 5,000 primary schools are being run by single teachers. In Sindh, 11,850 primary schools out of 38,132 in the public sector have become ‘not viable’ following low- and no-enrolment schools.
This is just the data on the state of primary schools — secondary and high schools are even scarcer, according to Dawn, which lashed at the politicians saying “while they bicker amongst themselves, indulging in either a short-sighted blame game or self-praise, the state of public education continues to remain one of the most neglected sectors in the country.”
For a long while education is touted as one of Pakistan’s greatest Achilles heels when it comes to progress. The government is ostensibly struggling to cope with over 22 million children out-of-school, poor literacy rates and a paucity of funds made worse by natural disasters and militancy. Rapid population expansion, which, according to the Express Tribune, has been largely ignored, has compounded matters.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) led government of Prime Minister Imran Khan is reportedly looking to double the overall education budget of the country from 2.2 per cent of GDP. Evidently, budgetary allocation alone does not offer the magic wand to solve the multi-pronged problem, which has become a sure recipe for frustration. Instead of just symptoms, the source of the problem should be addressed. For this political will is needed but it is in short supply.
– by Tushar Charan