Quality of education lags behind in public schools in Punjab

Ranking uses literacy and numeracy indicators based on percentage of results.

LAHORE: Quality of education especially in the subjects of math and English is lagging behind in public schools of the province, according to the Punjab government's school rankings for districts and divisions for the first quarter of 2017-18.

The ranking, part of the Chief Minister's School Reforms Roadmap, collects a plethora of indicators to measure the performance of public schools in the 36 districts of the province and ranks the districts and divisions accordingly. The ranking uses literacy and numeracy indicators based on the percentage of results of tests of English, Math, and Urdu, student and teacher attendance, student retention, infrastructure and facilities, and monitoring by administrative staff.



Quality assessment

According to the ranking, only 13 districts achieved the 80% target for math assessment and 23 districts failed to achieve the target. The 13 successful districts include Bahawalpur, Khanewal, Sargodha, Nankana Sahib, Pakpattan, Mandi Bahauddin, Toba Tek Sing, Rawalpindi, Bhakkar, Gujrat, Multan, Jhelum, and Lodhran.

Of the 23 districts, which failed to achieve the targets in math assessment, the bottom 5 districts included Faisalabad, Kasur, Khushab, Gujranwala, and Narowal. The capital and the largest city of the province – Lahore - also failed to achieve the targets.

The public schools in the province fared worse for the assessment of English as every district of the province failed to achieve the set target. The bottom 10 districts in the assessment included Sheikhupura, Faisalabad, Der Ghazi Khan, Khushab, Layyah, Mianwali, Gujranwala, Kasur, Rajanpur, and Narowal.

For the assessment of Urdu, 25 districts passed the assessment while only 11 scored below the 80% target. The 11 failing districts include Khushab, Dera Ghazi Khan, Sheikhupura, Faisalabad, Narowal, Rajanpur, Kasur, Okara, Muzaffargarh, Gujranwala, and Vehari.

Student, teacher attendance, and retention

According to the ranking, all districts except Kasur achieved the student attendance targets with the province's overall performance calculated at 91.4%. Similarly, all districts achieved the teachers' presence targets and the overall presence of teachers was calculated at 94.8%.

All the districts also achieved the retention targets, with the overall performance calculated at 98.8%. The Lahore district topped the retention raking among the 36 districts of the province, while Kasur was at the bottom of the ranking at the 36th place.



Facilities and dangerous school buildings

According to the data of the ranking, the overall performance of all the districts of the province in terms of provision of facilities in schools was 97.7% with 34 districts achieving the targets. The facilities include electricity, drinking water, toilets and boundary walls. The only two districts unable to achieve the targets were Rajanpur and Dera Ghazi Khan. The top 5 districts were Jhelum, Chiniot, Gujrat, Lahore and Vehari.

However, the districts showed poor performance when it comes to the security of buildings as 16 of the 36 districts of the province were unable to achieve the targets set by the government for dangerous school buildings.

According to the ranking, Layyah, Sargodha, Vehari, Lahore, Bahawalnagar, Gujranwala, Rahim Yar khan, Bahawalpur, Multan, Rajanpur, Khushab, Lodhran, Narowal, Nankana Sahib, Rawalpindi and Dera Ghazi Khan failed to meet the targets for reducing the whole or partial dangerous buildings.

Overall ranking

According to the overall ranking, Pakpattan topped, while Bhakkar was declared 2nd, Jhelum 3rd, Toba Tek Singh 4th and Gujrat was on the 5th spot. The bottom 5 districts in the ranking include Vehari, Narowal, Kasur, Rajanpur and Dear Ghazi Khan.

The quarter saw a drastic change in ranking from the last quarter where Pakpattan was on 10th position, Bhakkar was on 12th, Jhelum was on the second position, Toba Tek Singh was on 14th place and Gujrat was on 13th position. Whereas in the ranking of last quarter, this quarter's bottom 5 districts all fell in their ranking drastically. Vehari was on 21st place compared to the 32nd this quarter, Narowal was on 26th, Kasur on 3rd place and is now down to 34th place, Rajanpur was on the 32nd place and D G Khan on 30th falling to the 36th place this quarter.

Division ranking

The Rawalpindi division topped the ranking with Sahiwal on second place, Faisalabad on third, Bahawalpur on fourth, Sargodha on fifth, Gujranwala on the sixth, Multan on seventh, Lahore on eighth and Dera Ghazi Khan on the last and ninth place among the 9 divisions of the province.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 13^th, 2017.