Editorial

Government schools’ plight

Only a small portion of the allocated education budget goes to the improvement of infrastructure.

Editorial April 29, 2013

Playground of a government school. PHOTO: AZAM KHAN/EXPRESS

When we talk about a lack of leadership in Pakistan, we must include the education sector. This is supported by a recent report in this newspaper, informing us that only 50 per cent of Karachi’s government colleges have principals. The other 50 per cent of colleges are left to navigate on their own due to negligence on the part of the provincial education department. These colleges are currently run by senior teachers, who may or may not have administrative skills. If teachers are forced into administration offices when they should be in classrooms, we must question the quality of teaching students are receiving and by whom. Unarguably, senior teachers make some of the best educators as with their seniority comes years of experience.

Another bleak picture is painted in Punjab as hundreds of schools lack drinking water facilities, sewerage systems and boundary walls. Eight schools do not even have buildings. Of some Rs5.64 billion allocated to Punjab districts, Rs5.5 billion were sanctioned for teachers’ and department officials’ salaries, leaving only a small portion of the amount for improving school infrastructures. In Peshawar, a state-run special education school suspended transportation services after it was unable to meet fuel expenses. This impacted some 492 children with physical disabilities who use the facility. As if the state of education in Peshawar was not dreary enough, because of extremist forces, students now have to miss school because of a lack of transport. Better administration was required here to keep track of funds and ensure that students would have the means to get to school.

In all of these cases, there is a lack of responsibility from the state. Ownership and leadership must be shown towards government institutions. Responsible departments should provide the administration and funds necessary to enable the public education system to function smoothly. And we, as citizens, must keep pressing political parties until they act beyond rhetoric.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 30^th, 2013.

COMMENTS (1)

naeem khan Manhattan,Ks | 10 years ago | Reply

The elite send their children to private schools and they could not care less if the populace get proper education, as a matter of fact some of the policies are designed by people's representative to make sure that people don't get education and be threat to their status and dynastic political power in years to come. This is nothing new, it has been going on since the inception of Pakistan. I went to so called Urdu school in Mardan and 2 decades later when I visited my school, I was horrified to see high school students sitting on the mat with one dimly lit bulb hanging from the ceiling. This kind of affair is teetering on criminality because the future generations are deliberately denied the education they deserve and compete with the rest of world including our neighbor to the east.Let us hope that the new government could pay attention to the education sector and see to it that they are funded the required funding. And above all let the locally elected school boards run the schools instead of this bureaucratic nightmare coming out the provincial capitals, USA has good education system and it should be emulated, local control will help improve the education in Pakistan because they will be directly answering to the local people.

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