District rankings: Public debate urged to help meet education challenges

Alif Ailaan launches interactive education monitoring map online.


Riazul Haq June 20, 2013
The report dispels the perception that providing infrastructure will automatically improve the quality of education.

ISLAMABAD:


The state of the country’s education is stark and urgent action is needed to end Pakistan’s education emergency.


This was stated in a report on Pakistan’s district education rankings, launched by Alif Ailaan and Sustainable Development Policy Institute on Thursday.

“Besides the challenges of terrorism, energy crisis and governance, the state of education is the top priority of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government,” said State Minister for Education Balighur Rehman.



“We made it a priority in our manifesto and we will make every effort to cope with the mindboggling numbers of millions of out of school children and state of education in the country,” said Rehman.

He said it is shameful that 25 million primary school kids are out of school in Pakistan, adding that the only solution is to tackle it progressively, systematically and with a clear policy relying on sound data. “We not only need to focus on increasing enrolment but also ensure that quality is not neglected,” remarked Rehman.

The report dispels the commonly held perception that providing infrastructure and facilities will automatically improve the overall quality of education.



In fact this is not the case, as demonstrated by the findings for Azad Jammu and Kashmir which ranks highest in terms of the quality of education but lowest in terms of school infrastructure, according to the report.

No district in Sindh makes it in the top fifty of the report, not even Karachi. Meanwhile, Punjab takes the top position in the overall provincial rankings while Balochistan is the worst performing province.

An interesting and innovative part of the event was the interactive ‘Education and Budget’ map, the first of its kind in Pakistan. Available on the Alif Ailaan website, the map allows users to access key education statistics for each district and to send a letter to elected representatives in each constituency, pressing them to play their role in ending Pakistan’s education emergency. To reinforce the message, Alif Ailaan will also post a copy of each letter sent through the map directly to the Member of National Assembly or Member of Provincial Assembly in question.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 21st, 2013.

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