Universal education: ‘100% enrollment of children in Punjab expected by 2015’

Unofficial surveys can help analyse the situation but are not entirely accurate: SED.

LAHORE:

Having claimed enrolment of as many as 3.6 million children during the Jahalat Say Azadi drive, the School Education Department (SED) now says it is likely to achieve 100 per cent enrolment of students in the 5 to 9 age bracket by 2015.

A recent independent survey, however, has indicated that almost 18 per cent of children in the 5 to 9 years age bracket are still out of school.

SED Secretary Abdul Jabbar Shaheen told The Express Tribune that the chief minster’s education drive had not only exceeded expectations but had also encouraged the government to aim for 100 per cent enrolment by 2015. The government has crossed its official target for enrolment in 2013- 2.8 million children, he said. Shaheen said the drive had not only focused on enrolment but also the retention of students. A monitoring mechanism has been introduced to improve the quality of education, he said. He said 14 indicators of quality schooling and education had been identified including teachers’ attendance, students’ attendance, teacher training, availability and functioning of previously missing facilities and supervision by district administration teams. Shaheen said all indicators showed 90 per cent or better performance in 2013.

SED’s official data states that there are more than 57,000 [primary, middle and high schools] schools in the province. There are nearly 2.1 million boy students in primary schools and 1.7 million girl students. There are 115,000 boy students and 118,000 girl students enrolled in middle-primary schools.

The Annual Status of Education Report 2013 for the Punjab indicates that while the percentage of out-of-school children in the 6 to 16 age bracket is 16 per cent - exactly where it was last year – the percentage of out-of-school children aged 5 years and below is 18.2 per cent.

The ASER’s statistics indicate stagnation in the enrolment of out-of-school children, but SED Deputy Secretary Qaiser Rasheed contests these findings. SED’s surveys indicate that there are 21 million children enrolled in various educational systems in the province. Of these, 52 per cent of them, (11 million), are enrolled in government schools and almost 38 per cent (8 million) in private and government-private schools. The figures suggest that 9.52 per cent of the 21 million (almost 2 million) are enrolled in other educational institutions.

Apart from these 21 million children, the SED says it will now focus on enrolling out-of-school children in the 5 to 9 age bracket, identified in the 2013 Nielsen Survey.

Rasheed said the Nielsen Survey had identified almost 2.1 million children in the 5 to 9 age bracket that were still out of school and had not been mentioned in any of the official surveys. He said they had managed to enrol 33 per cent of these children in 2013. Almost 66.6 per cent of the children in the years 5 to 9 age bracket, mentioned in the Nielson Survey, are still out-of-school.  The SED will now focus on enrolling the remaining out-of-school children over the next three years, said Rasheed.

Rasheed says updated official figures are not available and the government largely relies on projected figures or surveys. Unofficial surveys are helpful in analysing the situation but are not entirely accurate, he says.

The government is focusing on achieving 100 per cent universal primary school enrolment and figures addressing the target age bracket would be more helpful, said Rasheed. “We are targeting children in the 5 to 9 age bracket because this is when children can make up for lost time even if they weren’t enrolled at the age of 5,” he said.

A different strategy needs to be devised for children over the age of 10 years who have never been enrolled, he said. “These children are usually enrolled in non-formal and vocational schools,” he said.

The ASER 2013 survey mentions that 8.3 per cent children in the 6 to 10 age bracket have never been enrolled in schools. Another 2 per cent of children in the same age cohort have dropped out of school. This indicates that almost 10 per cent of the children in the 6 to 10 age bracket are out of school in the province apart from the 18 per cent 5 year-olds who are out of school. The SED however maintains that the figures do not suggest a bleak prospect for children in the province. “Our target is 100 per cent universal primary education by 2015 and our target age bracket will be children aged 5 to 9,” said Rasheed.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 19^th, 2014.