Pashto dying slow death in Peshawar schools

Barely any schools teach the subject anymore with children declared as passed

PESHAWAR: Despite the fact that teaching the Pashto language has been deemed compulsory by the provincial government, a vast majority of the schools in the provincial capital do not teach it.

Since it is not taught, a majority of the schools do not evaluate knowledge of students regarding Pashto through annual examinations with children declared as ‘passed’ in the exams to complete formalities stipulated by the education department.

This has led the Peshawar district education officers to express concern over Pashto dying out as a subject.



Following the devolution of education to the provinces under the 18th Amendment and renaming the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) as Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, the provincial government had decided to impose the province’s most widely-spoken language Pashto as the medium of instruction at the primary level in all regions except for Hazara, Kohistan, Chitral and central Peshawar.

Pashto was also made a compulsory subject at the secondary level alongside Urdu in Peshawar, Mardan Charsadda, Nowshera, Swabi but optional in Hazara and Dera Ismail Khan.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, November 12^th, 2018.