Understaffed: Buner’s schools in need of 600 teachers

Around 32,000 students directly affected across the district.

PESHAWAR: Around 600 teachers are required for 32,000 students across various government schools in Buner district. As the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa education department wails over a lack of funds, complaints and queries directed towards the Civil Secretariat fall on deaf ears.

Buner District Education Officer (DEO) Shiraz Ahmed said an influx of complaints is forwarded to the education directorate on a daily basis. “Most schools in the district are understaffed. The faculty present is below par since most teachers possess minimal academic qualifications,” he said. The DEO said there is no institute in Pakistan where schoolteachers are trained before being posted in different areas.

Ahmed claimed the incumbent government’s training modules are Peshawar-centric and little importance is given to other districts of the province.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, MPA Maulana Mufti Fazal Ghafoor said for the ongoing fiscal year, he has been provided with funds for only one school while the required number of primary schools alone exceeds 30 in his constituency. Ghafoor said money has been allocated for only two schools for the whole of Buner in the provincial budget.

The MPA added the area’s lawmakers met Chief Minister Pervez Khattak and Minister for Education Atif Khan in this regard, but their requests were turned down. “We questioned Khan on the floor of the house. On one hand, he says the department doesn’t have enough money, and on the other, he fails to completely utilise the allocated amount,” he said, citing a lack of foresight as the reason for these inadequacies.

According to statistics provided by NGO Alif Ailaan, only 30% of Buner’s fifth graders can read Urdu while 31% can read English. Moreover, 47% of the district’s schools are without electricity connections, 35% without sanitation facilities, 20% lack restrooms and 15% of the schools are not encircled by boundary walls. Interestingly, 7% of Buner’s schools comprise of a single room only.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 5^th, 2015.