Educated guess: No such thing as free education

Funding issues plague 6,200 National Education Foundation schools.

MULTAN:

Teaching staff at over 6,200 National Education Foundation (NEF) schools have not been paid for the past eleven months.

Students, teachers and members of civil society have been protesting all over Punjab for the past week after the Punjab government’s decision to stop funding for the NEF programme. “Thousands of children are being affected by the decision because it proves that the government’s claim to provide free education is a hollow one,” said NEF school teacher in Vehari, Rukhsana Habib.

“I have been teaching at a government school for over a decade and the funding has steadily decreased. Now it is virtually absent and everything is being redirected to the chief minister’s pet Danish school project,” she said.

The NEF school system was established in 1996 but currently students are without books and the staff is without pay. “It is a disaster. There are so many politicians making mixed claims about how the public education system is being improved but it is nonsense. The solution isn’t to launch a new system but to improve what is already there and they have practically shut us down,” said NEF deputy director Mazhar Hayat. “I haven’t even been paid for the past six months and there are people who haven’t received a year’s pay. Students and teachers are being affected by this and the haggling between the federal and the provincial government needs to settle,” he said.

“I have seen many media reports that government schools students now receive free education but this is not true. They are not charging us because there is nothing to charge for. My daughter doesn’t have any books and the school doesn’t have any teachers,” said fifth grader Sanam’s mother Afshan, in Dera Ghazi Khan.

Protesters said that the Punjab government’s decision to redirect most of its funding to the Danish schools had left the existing public school system in a lurch. “Over 20,000 students have been affected only in Vehari,” said Vehari school teacher Asad.

A recent report shows that the funding fiasco is likely to affect 260,000 students all over the province. “Funding has been completely shut off since March this year and the effect has been disastrous,” Hayat said. “They have brought us on the streets and that is why we are protesting. The Punjab government needs to get its priorities straight. It needs to fix the existing education system before chasing the dreams of a new one,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 14^th, 2011.