Despite Rs12b budget, public schools fail to deliver

Only 1.9% of the A-one graders were enrolled in public schools


Safdar Rizvi December 12, 2018
Only 1.9% of the A-one graders were enrolled in public schools. PHOTO: FILE

KARACHI: The 2018 results of the annual Matriculation examinations of the science group examinations conducted by Karachi Board of Secondary Education made surprising revelations regarding the poor performance of over 600 public schools, which will cost the taxpayers an estimated Rs12 billion in the current fiscal year.

According to statistics of the examination results available with The Express Tribune, 313 out of a total of 16,239 A-one grade students were enrolled inn the government schools. This makes 1.9% of all A-one grade scores from both private and public schools.

Out of 157,545 total students who appeared in the examination, 12.31% were from government schools. Compared to this figure, hardly 10.85% of the 98,834 students who passed the exams were from the public schools.

Out of 19,401 students from government schools who appeared for the examination, 10,726 were successful, which was over 50%.

Cost-effective?

The Sindh government has allocated a budget of more than Rs12b in fiscal year, 2018-19, for government-run secondary, higher secondary and elementary schools. This budget is used to pay the salaries of employees and teachers along with other expenditures. The fee of each student per month in secondary schools is Rs4,403 amounting to Rs145 spent on each student every day. Despite the allocation of this amount, the students' performance in annual examinations leaves much to be desired. It has also raised questions for the government and Department of Education.

After the introduction of the biometric system, teachers have returned to their institutions but the questions remains whether they have also started teaching. The teachers' performance, academic style and qualifications, and the environment provided to the students have all been a challenge for the Sindh government. The level of secondary education of all government and private schools is the same as the syllabus is taken from the Sindh Textbook Board. Despite studying from the same books, the results of private and government schools show a huge difference.

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Fourteen male students and 299 female students from government schools achieved A-one grades whereas 4,253 male students and 11,673 female students from private schools achieved A-one grades which made 18% of the total private schools students who passed the Matriculation Science examinations.

Meanwhile, 1,332 students from the government schools secured A grades, out of which 170 were male while 116 were female students.

A graders from private schools totalled 25,154 students, out of which 9,659 were male and 15,495 were female students.

B graders were a total of 2,909 students from the government schools which made 27.12% of the all such students. Out of them, 772 male and 2,137 female students were among the successful while 12,495 male and 13,226 female students from private schools passed the examination with B grade.

3,967 students from government schools and 17,344 students from private schools secured C grades.

More than 600 secondary and higher secondary schools operate in Karachi from which students appeared for the examinations.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 12th, 2018.

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