SCC-II’s results lay bare poor performance of FDE

None of govt educational institutions in Islamabad make it to top list in matric exams

ISLAMABAD:

None of the Federal Directorate of Education-run educational institutions — except for one — could make it to the top positions in the recently conducted secondary school certificate-II annual examinations under the Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (FBISE).

This poor performance has once again laid bare the perennial issues facing the government educational institutions in the federal capital despite the introduction of the student learning outcomes (SLO) system and the single national curriculum.

Interestingly, none of the educational institutions under the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) Islamabad could make it to the top positions except for one institution which shared the third position in the humanities group. All positions were bagged by the students of army-run public schools except for the one-third position clinched by the student of the Model College for Girls G-12 in the humanities group.

Most of the teachers and school heads, who spoke to The Express Tribune requesting not to be named, put the blame squarely on the federal education ministry and the FDE for the poor show stating that the teachers not only lack resource material including audio-visual aids to teach the students, most of them slow-learners, but also they were not imparted training by the FDE and education ministry about the latest pedagogical mode of teaching.

They said that the seriousness of the education ministry could be gauged from the fact that the national single curriculum (SNC) was launched without taking input from teachers and subsequently thrust upon them (to teach to the students) without conducting training sessions about the new syllabus.

They said that the new curriculum has been designed without considering the aptitude of the students being enrolled in government schools.

“This is a regressive, orthodox and counter-revolutionary syllabus at best,” commented one teacher who said that the authorities concerned have attempted to copy the Oxford curriculum but have ended up creating a bungled-up curriculum. “It is a one-sided syllabus developed by a few individuals who had a modicum of consideration for the aptitude of the students enrolled in government schools.

Most of the teachers said it was an irony that parents send those students to government schools who show terrible performance at home. They said that expecting a shining result with such students was an uphill task given the meagre resources available to teachers.

“The government has the policy of enrolling each and every student which has taken a toll on the overall performance of government educational institutions,” said a head teacher of a school.

She said that some students are absolutely inept and heavy-handed and they never learn despite a hundred per cent input from the teachers. “The education ministry must thrash out an admission policy where students should be inducted after a basic test,” she said adding that not every person is born with an innate ability to excel in education and such students should be taught and offered other skills including music and painting in schools.

Another teacher of a primary school said that they were overburdened with subjects and each teacher has to teach five to six subjects daily. “How can you expect good results from teachers who are overworked and exhausted?” she said adding that there was a serious dearth of subject teachers in every school.

The teachers claimed that the FDE top officials only issue orders disdainfully without facilitating teachers. “Our school has less than Rs0.1 million annual budget but the FDE wants us to manage everything in it. Will we buy stationery and other necessary items for the school or buy other resource material for classes,” commented a teacher of a primary school, who said that schools were not allowed to charge a fee from the students and schools have no other resources except for the meagre fund provided by the FDE.

Most teachers said that they should be imparted training according to the new curriculum before the authorities demanded good results from them.

FDE Director-General Ikram Ali Malik in his written reply said: “The FDE is inherited with systemic issues scattered at policy, organizational and institution levels, including capacity issues of key stakeholders, commitment to the cause of the organisation, lacking accountability and emblematic issue of poor governance in public sector organisation.”

He said that “there is lack of meaningful accountability mechanism due to cartelisation of employees; non-existence of an organized institutional setup for on-job training and capacity building of human resources and upkeeping of physical resources; non-revisiting of recruitment rules for teaching faculty over decades to digest the emerging subjects/needs required to be inculcated and the most disturbing is the level of response, commitment and realisation of sanctified responsibility at large by the teaching faculty.”

He said that to address all such issues, “the FDE has amended the recruitment rules by replacing intermediate qualification with a four years bachelor’s degree to hire teachers in subjects of science, mathematics, computer science and English.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 9^th, 2022.