There are 600 students and only four teachers in the Government Girls Degree College Barikot.
ISLAMABAD: This is with reference to the story “Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa govt to wage jihad against illiteracy: Imran Khan” (September 10). I will try to explain the magnitude of the problem the education sector faces as I have been visiting government schools in the Swat district for a documentary. It is heart-wrenching and pitiful. There are 600 students and only four teachers in the Government Girls Degree College Barikot and 200 students and only two teachers in the Girls Primary School Mera Mai. These are just a few examples and are reflective of the situation prevalent in the area. A humanitarian organisation has provided around 1,000 computers in 53 government schools but for the last two years, they have not even been switched on even once as there is no computer course in the district’s curriculum.
Talk to the teachers there and you will see that they feel that the whole system is resting on a flawed educational structure. The principal in most institutions is completely powerless. They cannot run the schools and hold teachers responsible for their poor performance. There are no teacher training programmes, in fact, as mentioned previously, there are no teachers at all.
I can go on with stories of students working after school to provide for their homes and at the same time, holding on to their dreams of becoming engineers, doctors and teachers. I hope Imran Khan gets out of Peshawar and visits these schools to see what is happening in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
Ali Ashraf
Published in The Express Tribune, September 12th, 2013.
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