I hope the government, civil society and NGOs contribute together for improvement of girls education
BALOCHISTAN: For the last six decades scant attention has been paid to the education sector, especially that of females. An insight into the situation of female education on primary level in Balochistan, when compared to other provinces is even worse. Dropout levels are at 70pc.
While structural, cultural, social and gender discrimination are common factors leading to neglecting women education on primary level, unavailability of schools in villages also accounts for the decline as parents are reluctant to send their children outside their villages. Moreover, lack of separate toilets, unclean drinking water and absence of boundary walls in most primary schools at community level, discourages people to send their children to school. Another real issue is Balochistan’s widespread geographical area. It acts as a barrier in expanding primary education.
However, Balochistan’s government is taking an initiative to curb this horrible condition. They adopted a suitable policy to focus on improvement of primary enrollment ratio and control dropout figures, increased the budget to increase literacy ratio and tried to provide basic needs, such as separate toilet and potable water in schools. The school education is free and the government provides free-of-cost textbooks. The government is introducing early child education in the schools with financial assistance of Unicef and EKN.
Social Welfare and Non-formal Literacy Department has already taken revolutionary steps to address adult literacy for children between nine and 16 years, who could not complete their education due to social, economic and cultural barriers. They opened new literacy centres in nine districts of the province, with 10 centres in each district and appointed local metric qualified female teachers, with the objective to increase female education on primary level and pursue Sustainable Development Goals 2030.
I hope the government, civil society and NGOs contribute together for improvement of girls education in remote areas of Balochistan.
Shakeel Ahmed Kolachi
Published in The Express Tribune, May 5th, 2017.
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