School enrolment: ‘Hello, I’m Jamshed Dasti. Please send your child to school’

Politicians join campaign to convince parents to enrol out-of-school children.

LAHORE: Twenty-four out-of-school-children have recently been enrolled in government schools as part of a campaign attempting to bring politicians closer to their constituents by knocking on their doors and asking them to send their children to school.

Eight politicians have joined the Politicians Knocking on Doors (PKD) initiative since it began on April 2, launched by Alif Ailaan and Idara-i-Taleem-o-Agahi (ITA), both of which are non-government organisations working in education.



Though 24 children is a drop in the ocean considering that 23 per cent of children aged six to 16 are out of school, according to the Annual Status of Education Report for 2012, the campaign’s managers say it aims not just to get children to school, but to raise the profile of education as a political issue ahead of the elections.

“We keep criticising politicians, but what we as citizens fail to realise is that they are part of the solution and not just the problem,” says Imran Khan, the civil society campaign manager at Alif Ailaan.

Khan says there is a general perception that the country is in an “education emergency” because of a lack of political will.

The campaign, he hopes, will give politicians an opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to improving the state of education “at a personal level”.

Under the campaign, politicians are taken to homes where children who are not enrolled in school are known to live, as identified by the local community.

The politicians speak to the parents and try to convince them of the benefits of education. If successful, the politician accompanies the parents and child to the nearest government school for enrolment.

“The personal visits by politicians to people’s homes makes the message more personal and emotional,” says Khan. “They are overwhelmed to see them.”

But the campaign has also been criticised on its social media pages as an election gimmick for politicians. Khan accepts the criticism, but adds: “If this results in education becoming part of a larger public debate, it is a step in the right direction.”

He said that politicians needed to engage voters on education, particularly with the recent addition to the Constitution of Article 25-A, making free and compulsory education a right for children aged 5 to 16.

So far, eight politicians – from the PTI, PML-N, PPP, JI and JUI-F   have participated in the campaign, visiting homes in Swat, Mardan, Quetta, Sargodha, Sialkot and Gujranwala. PKD hopes to engage 10 politicians each in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab and three each in Sindh and Balochistan before the election.

Among them is Jamshed Dasti, the former MNA accused of faking a bachelor’s degree, who will be knocking on doors in Muzaffargarh this week to encourage parents to send their kids to school.

Waqas Bajwa, the PKD campaign manager at ITA, says there is “nothing surprising” about this. “Whatever his conditions were or whatever situation he faced, he’s now out there asking parents to put their children in schools,” he says.

On April 29, the campaign will head to Peshawar and Mianwali, followed by Nankana Sahib, Multan and Muzaffargarh later this week.

Bajwa says more and more politicians are now speaking about education with the people of their constituency. “In earlier elections, education was never really on anyone’s agenda,” he says. “Now politicians are willing to talk about things like their plan to counter the high drop-out rates in schools, issues that rarely came up before.”

He notes that priorities have changed for the voters too. At the local level, schools are joining the list of concerns like roads and sewerage for the voter, he says. As people become more conscious about the need for education, politicians will too as it will get them more votes, he adds.

After the election, the PKD will lobby elected representatives to work out a strategy to “eliminate the education emergency” within 100 days of taking their oath of office.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 29^th, 2013.