Widespread literacy still a far-fetched dream
The Express Tribune reviews the impact of changes in education department
KARACHI:
The year 2016 witnessed many upheavals in the Education and Literacy Department (ELD), including its bifurcation, change of its heads and the division of their powers, but the goal of widespread literacy in the province still remains a far-fetched dream.
Almost all the chairpersons of educational boards were replaced. Along with this, Jam Mehtab Hussain Dahar was appointed education minister and recently Jamal Mustafa Syed was appointed the new education secretary, replacing Dr Fazlullah Pechuho who had been serving as secretary since 2013.
Soon after coming into power, Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah declared an 'education emergency' in the province and devolved the ELD into two sections - the school education department and college education department - both of which will now be headed by separate secretaries.
Another secretary looks after the third section - universities and examination boards.
The schools secretary is handling schools with a budgetary allocation of Rs1.51 billion for elementary education and Rs6.86 billion for secondary education. Meanwhile, a sum of Rs4.59 billion was allocated for college education.
Examining effects of bifurcation
The idea behind the bifurcation was to ensure that one secretary is not burdened with more than he can handle. The CM had remarked that it is not possible for a single secretary to look after schools and colleges simultaneously.
However, the difference between the number of schools and colleges is so vast that the burden the CM tried to ease by bifurcating the department has not been alleviated.
Despite the upheaval, the ELD's problems remain the same. The department has failed to provide services to the vast majority of people in the province and therefore private schools are becoming more common.
Moreover, the status of the new and ongoing projects in the department has not seen any changes; many of the schemes remain untouched and unapproved. In 2016 there is little difference in the ELD, as some schemes might have been started on paper but the actual physical work has not begun yet. Due to Pechuho's transfer many of his reforms and improvement initiatives have come to a standstill.
According to the ELD's official statistics, there are 46,039 primary, elementary, secondary and higher secondary schools in the province but only has 271 colleges, of which 125 are in Karachi.
Improving the system
The biggest developments the department underwent were biometric registration of teaching and non-teaching staff, handing over of schools in public-private partnership and establishment of a provincial-level Inter Board Committee of Chairmen (IBCC).
Currently, 106 schools are in the pipeline for the public-private partnership project, while in 2016 around a dozen schools were handed over to the private sector.
The schools which were handed over were affected by the 2010 floods and are now being upgraded and rebuilt by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). For the public-private partnership programme, USAID surveyed the province and identified 1,000 schools needing upgrades.
The schools will be handed over under the public-private partnership between the ELD and private non-government organisations (NGOs).
In the beginning, an agreement of five years was signed between the ELD and various NGOs. Since NGOs do not have the authority to allocate land, their primary responsibility is to improve the façade of the buildings and focus on increasing enrollment, providing free education, decreasing absenteeism and conducting tests more frequently.
As per the agreement, the private sector will only look after the administration and the teachers will be the same, as appointed by the ELD. However, if the private organisations feel that the teachers are not performing well they can hire new teachers and the ELD can replace the teachers later. The partnership plans on testing the quality of teachers, while the Sindh Education Foundation will conduct their training and tests through a third party.
Under the scheme, the Sindh Madrassah Board has been given the responsibility of 31 schools, some of which are located in marginalised areas in Taiser Town and Gadap Town. Sindh Madrassah Board's Shafiqur Rehman Paracha remarked that the partnership seeks to improve the education sector. This will allow closed schools to open again and children from marginalised areas to have access to high-quality education, he said.
"If the teachers and students are getting trained then there is no issue in the partnership," he said. Speaking about the benefits of the partnership, he said that under the scheme the government will pay Rs500 per student as a subsidy to provide the children high-quality education, which ELD is failing to provide.
ELD is also running an adoption of schools scheme, in which certain schools have been given school specific budgets and school management committee budgets. These schools are also those which were closed and also which were not performing well and had a low enrollment. The partnership schools will be paid a specified amount to look after these schools on quarterly basis. This scheme does not have per student subsidy but they deal with a viability gap fund (VGF) to help these schools financially. The allocation in VGF was Rs500 million rupees, last year, which will be invested in students' uniforms, shoes, courses and different programmes.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 1st, 2017.
The year 2016 witnessed many upheavals in the Education and Literacy Department (ELD), including its bifurcation, change of its heads and the division of their powers, but the goal of widespread literacy in the province still remains a far-fetched dream.
Almost all the chairpersons of educational boards were replaced. Along with this, Jam Mehtab Hussain Dahar was appointed education minister and recently Jamal Mustafa Syed was appointed the new education secretary, replacing Dr Fazlullah Pechuho who had been serving as secretary since 2013.
Soon after coming into power, Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah declared an 'education emergency' in the province and devolved the ELD into two sections - the school education department and college education department - both of which will now be headed by separate secretaries.
Another secretary looks after the third section - universities and examination boards.
The schools secretary is handling schools with a budgetary allocation of Rs1.51 billion for elementary education and Rs6.86 billion for secondary education. Meanwhile, a sum of Rs4.59 billion was allocated for college education.
Examining effects of bifurcation
The idea behind the bifurcation was to ensure that one secretary is not burdened with more than he can handle. The CM had remarked that it is not possible for a single secretary to look after schools and colleges simultaneously.
However, the difference between the number of schools and colleges is so vast that the burden the CM tried to ease by bifurcating the department has not been alleviated.
Despite the upheaval, the ELD's problems remain the same. The department has failed to provide services to the vast majority of people in the province and therefore private schools are becoming more common.
Moreover, the status of the new and ongoing projects in the department has not seen any changes; many of the schemes remain untouched and unapproved. In 2016 there is little difference in the ELD, as some schemes might have been started on paper but the actual physical work has not begun yet. Due to Pechuho's transfer many of his reforms and improvement initiatives have come to a standstill.
According to the ELD's official statistics, there are 46,039 primary, elementary, secondary and higher secondary schools in the province but only has 271 colleges, of which 125 are in Karachi.
Improving the system
The biggest developments the department underwent were biometric registration of teaching and non-teaching staff, handing over of schools in public-private partnership and establishment of a provincial-level Inter Board Committee of Chairmen (IBCC).
Currently, 106 schools are in the pipeline for the public-private partnership project, while in 2016 around a dozen schools were handed over to the private sector.
The schools which were handed over were affected by the 2010 floods and are now being upgraded and rebuilt by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). For the public-private partnership programme, USAID surveyed the province and identified 1,000 schools needing upgrades.
The schools will be handed over under the public-private partnership between the ELD and private non-government organisations (NGOs).
In the beginning, an agreement of five years was signed between the ELD and various NGOs. Since NGOs do not have the authority to allocate land, their primary responsibility is to improve the façade of the buildings and focus on increasing enrollment, providing free education, decreasing absenteeism and conducting tests more frequently.
As per the agreement, the private sector will only look after the administration and the teachers will be the same, as appointed by the ELD. However, if the private organisations feel that the teachers are not performing well they can hire new teachers and the ELD can replace the teachers later. The partnership plans on testing the quality of teachers, while the Sindh Education Foundation will conduct their training and tests through a third party.
Under the scheme, the Sindh Madrassah Board has been given the responsibility of 31 schools, some of which are located in marginalised areas in Taiser Town and Gadap Town. Sindh Madrassah Board's Shafiqur Rehman Paracha remarked that the partnership seeks to improve the education sector. This will allow closed schools to open again and children from marginalised areas to have access to high-quality education, he said.
"If the teachers and students are getting trained then there is no issue in the partnership," he said. Speaking about the benefits of the partnership, he said that under the scheme the government will pay Rs500 per student as a subsidy to provide the children high-quality education, which ELD is failing to provide.
ELD is also running an adoption of schools scheme, in which certain schools have been given school specific budgets and school management committee budgets. These schools are also those which were closed and also which were not performing well and had a low enrollment. The partnership schools will be paid a specified amount to look after these schools on quarterly basis. This scheme does not have per student subsidy but they deal with a viability gap fund (VGF) to help these schools financially. The allocation in VGF was Rs500 million rupees, last year, which will be invested in students' uniforms, shoes, courses and different programmes.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 1st, 2017.