Focus on education: ‘Members of school councils lack training’

Experts discuss report on education sector procurements.

LAHORE:

More than 50 per cent of school council members have not received any training in two years in procurement, construction and civil works or formulation of school improvement plans.

This was revealed during a discussion on the report Education Sector Procurements in Punjab: A Horizontal Accountability Perspective. The event was organised by the Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (ISAPS) on Tuesday.

Ahmed Ali, a research fellow at ISAPS, said that during the financial year 2013-2014, school councils were allocated a budget of Rs5 billion. “Of this Rs3.5 billion was allocated for nine districts under the Punjab Education Sector Reform Programme. Rs1.5 billion was allocated for the remaining 27 districts. In the current year, the reform programme was further expanded to 18 districts,” he said.

“Despite the extensive allocations, there is a lack of appropriate training of members of these councils. Data from ISPAS indicates that in the areas of procurement, school improvement plans, civil works and construction, the training of members of the council, including chairperson, co-chairperson, parent and general members reflected poor trends. More than 45 per cent of the members did not receive any training in the areas,” he said.

Ali said that understanding of procurement process and information disclosure stood out as the major issues plaguing the working of school councils. “There is an urgent need for such departments to work on information disclosure to allow people to get details on the projects and their working,” he added.

Ali also said that a greater involvement of citizens was needed in such school councils. “Schools councils are primarily controlled by heads of the educational institutions, not the citizens - this needs to be set right,” he said.

“A major chunk of development was directed towards procurement of services and books, adding that effective use of money was necessary in this regard. In 2013-14, the allocation in this regard went up to Rs15 billion. Making governments responsible, transparent and accountable is the bigger challenge,” he said. For the year 2013-14, he said, the education sector procurement cost went up to Rs6 billion for school civil works, Rs3.4 billion for free textbooks and Rs5 billion for school council purchases.

MPA Saadia Sohail said that there was a need to change the prevalent concept that education was a business.

Sohail said too often the right person was not assigned the job. She stressed the need to strengthen government systems to deliver and be accountable to the public.

MPA Shunila Ruth said there was no room to make mistakes in the education system. There should be one education system in Pakistan, she said.

“The main issue is not funding, but quality,” said Abbas Rashid, the Society for Advancement of Education (SAHE) executive director. He said that from basic facilities, quality of books and grade and age appropriateness of textbooks was vital for quality education. “Trained and qualified teachers are an integral requirement of quality education,” he said.

Standing Committee on Education chairman Qamarul Islam Raja said that there were several shortcomings in the procurement practices, but the actual problem was flawed management. “

In the procurement procedures and rules, there is a need to abide by the Punjab Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) guidelines,” he said. He also defended the committee and its performance regarding making sound and valid arguments relating to legislations. “We have played a proactive role, standing up when it was required for the issue at hand,” he said.

Raja said that certain clauses of the Punjab Higher Education Commission Bill were also removed from the draft proposed by the committee. “Our problem is essentially not one of laws, but one of management,” he said.

He said a committee was being constituted to further strengthen the role and effectiveness of standing committees.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 7^th, 2014.