Public schools to fall woefully short of enrolment targets

Second phase of admissions to end on October 31

RAWALPINDI:

The strike by government teachers and employees disrupted the second phase of admissions in government schools across the province, with the education ministry saying enrolments for the current educational year would end October 31.

The dates for the second phase of admissions were set between August 21 to October 31. However, the pen-down strike by teachers protesting changes to leave encashment, pension rules and the proposed privatization of government schools badly affected the enrolment drive among other activities.

For the current educational year, government schools had been given a target of enrolling between 5 to 10 per cent new students. During this phase, however, new admissions were said to be be as low as between 0.2 to 2 per cent.

Read: Govt schools reopen after 18-day protest

Public schools would resume admissions in the next educational year after the annual examinations in March.

As per data, there were 11.9 million students are studying in 84,846 government schools across the province. The education ministry had set a target of 12.5 million students which wasn’t attained. In the current year, public schools witnessed a 1 per cent dropout rate.

One of the reasons cited for the dropout rate was the strike by education officers, teachers and non-teaching staff along with suspension of classes at government schools.

However, there remains a poor student-to-teacher ratio in most government schools.

According to one teachers’ collective, there were 338,196 slots of teachers at these public schools. Of these, 112,240 slots – or one in three positions – had not been filled.

They said that no new teacher recruitment had taken place for the last several years. There are seven to ten open teaching positions in every school in the small towns in the province, said one office holder of the collective.

In many villages, the primary schools only have one teacher to run the entire school. It makes a mockery of the 1:10 teacher-student ratio that is considered ideal for a child’s development.

Some educationists have ascribed the drop in new admissions to systemic failure, the phased privatisation of government schools, the elimination of free books, and uniform policies.

"The school privatization plan affected the new admissions system. On the other hand, fewer students are enrolled in the primary classes of government schools because of the establishment of private schools on streets and neighbourhoods,” said Shafiq Bhalwalia of one teachers’ collective.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, October 25^th, 2023.