Lahore govt schools show poor performance

Ranking is part of Chief Minister's School Reforms Roadmap

LAHORE: The provincial capital of Punjab – Lahore – consistently scored in the middle and lower tier of the quarterly ranking of government schools. The ranking assesses different facilities, learning outcomes and ranks districts and divisions accordingly.

The ranking is part of the Chief Minister's School Reforms Roadmap which measures the performance of public schools in all 36 districts of the province. It is done on the basis of wide-ranging indicators. The latest ranking is for the third quarter of 2017-18 for the months of January, February and March of 2018.

It looks at student and teacher attendance, monitoring visits of schools, retention of students in different grades, functioning facilities and hygiene, including toilets, as well as four different literacy indicators. The literacy indicators are based on test results of English, Urdu and Mathematics.

Lahore ranked in the lower and middle tier of the ranking for most of the indicators and was only part of the higher rated districts for a few of the results. For the overall student attendance, the city was ranked 35th only ahead of Lodhran, achieving targets for a single month out of the total three. For attendance of grade kachi, Lahore again remained on 35th spot and for the attendance of grades kachi to 3, the district was graded 34th.

Lahore was ranked at the top spot among all the 36 districts of the province for retention of students for grade kachi. Similarly, for retention for Kachi to grade 3, Lahore was among the top districts at second position behind Pakpattan.

For administrative visits by the Assistant Education Officers (AEOs), Lahore was ranked in 22nd place, whereas the district — along with all the other districts of the province — achieved targets for all three months of the quarterly ranking. In terms of teachers' presence, Lahore ranked a lowly 32nd place.

The capital was among the top ranking districts in terms of functioning facilities and took second spot behind Chiniot. The ranking based is on the results on the functioning or availability of electricity and drinking water, functioning of toilets and boundary walls for schools.

However, Lahore once again was rated lower when it came to the availability of a sufficient number of toilets. The district was ranked 26th.

For school hygiene indicators, which were graded cleanliness at schools based on building, classrooms, toilets and playgrounds, Lahore was ranked at 12th spot.

For the ranking based on the English test, Lahore was ranked at the 8th spot and the district grabbed the same position for the Urdu test.

The math test also ranked the capital in the 8th position. However, results based on literacy and numeracy material showed Lahore had performed poorly with a rank of 25th.

In the overall ranking based on all the indicators, Lahore district was ranked at the 27th position. While the Lahore division fared poorer by getting the last spot.

According to the overall district ranking, district Okara ranked first, Bhakkar second, Sargodha third, Layyah fourth and Khanewal was fifth.

The bottom five districts included Gujranwala at 32nd, Mianwali 33rd, Rajanpur at 34th spot, Dera Ghazi Khan in 35th and Sheikhupura at the bottom at 36th.

For the ranking of divisions, Sahiwal secured top spot, Rawalpindi division took second, Sargodha was third, Multan fourth, Faisalabad fifth, Dera Ghazi Khan at sixth, Gujranwala at seventh, Bahawalpur at eighth and Lahore remained at the last and ninth place.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 13^th, 2018.