10.11.2013 Yet to learn our lesson
A girl school in Fort Abbas, District Bahawalnagar, is a telltale of our poor
education policies
By Rasheed Ali
No headmistress for over a year, only one teacher for ninth and tenth classes, no clerical staff at all, no science laboratory or apparatus for science subjects practical examination preparation, and no clean drinking water facility: this is Government Girls High School, Chak No 330/HR, Marot, Tehsil Fort Abbas, District Bahawalnagar.
Nyla Rasheed, the teacher in-charge at the school, has a long list of complaints to relate if you ask her about the on-ground situation. The school caters for girl students coming from at least seven nearby villages, situated at the brink of Cholistan desert. But the educational facility is facing so many problems for long that it has almost failed to retain its students, says Ms Nyla.
“During the last one year, we invited the community leaders, made all-out efforts and admitted almost 20 students to ninth class,” says Nyla, but regrets that almost half of them left the school due to various reasons including non-availability of science teachers and laboratory facility.
Only six teachers are serving at the high school currently and there is no math teacher at all for the secondary section. “In the absence of a headmistress, I have to work as the head teacher and manage the school affairs. And as there is not a single clerk in the school, I have to dispose of all clerical tasks after the school time, though I feel really exhausted after taking eight periods daily,” complains the young teacher.
This school must have much more number of students compared with its current strength of about 300. But sometimes parents and mostly students themselves prefer going to the Girls High School, Marot — the biggest town in the area, situated about 13 kilometres away — due to non-availability of science teachers in the Chak No 330/HR high school.
Amna Ishtiaq, a dropout, endorses Ms Nyla Rasheed’s assertions. She had to leave her education after she failed her eighth class examination.
“I never liked mathematics as a subject,” says Amna. “I always found it difficult to grasp this subject fully even when a teacher was available in lower classes,” she adds. “And in 8th class, unluckily we did not have teachers to teach us mathematics and English subjects, so I failed my exam,” explains Amna sadly.
“My father had already told me that whenever I will fail my exam, he will withdraw me from school and marry me off. Now, I don’t go to school though I want to, and get education at least to college level.” And thus Amna met the fate of hundreds of thousands of girls of her kind.
However, Bahawalnagar District Education Officer (DEO) Iqbal Ahmad offers a remedy to avoid such situations in the future.
Admitting that a number of schools, especially girl schools, in the entire region are short of teachers, he reveals that the Education Department has evolved a strategy to solve the problem. There are some schools in the district which have more teachers than the prescribed teacher-student ratio. And in some schools, the situation is vice versa, he tells TNS by telephone.
“After completion of a survey, all ‘additional’ teachers will be transferred to those schools where they are needed more due to larger number of students,” Iqbal Ahmad discloses the government plan. “The process will be completed in 10 to 15 days,” promises the DEO, though teachers at the 330/HR girl high school are not ready to buy the claim, as they have been hearing about it for months with no solution as yet.
The officer, nevertheless, fails to give any assurance about posting a clerk to Nyla Rasheed’s school or providing any equipment for science subjects practicals, as no strategy has been evolved in this regard so far.
However, Chaudhry Irshad Ali, former naib nazim of the area, is unable to understand the novel strategy. “It is totally non-sense,” he says bitterly. “Instead of bringing more girl students to schools, they are going totally in the opposite direction. They should have invited and involved the village elders to help convince all parents to send their children to schools instead of transferring teachers,” the Chaudhry of Chak No 338/HR makes a point.
He says that parents of his area villages are already in a fix as sending their daughters to a high school about 15 kilometres away is not possible for them, especially while no proper transport means are available in the area.
There is no public or private transport system throughout the area. Whosoever wants his daughter to get proper education in a high school, has to give her the pick-and-drop facility on his own, explains Ch Irshad. And it is a pity that over 90 per cent parents are too poor to afford the pick-and-drop facility, financially and practically, adds the ex-naib nazim.
However, there is nothing new in the above mentioned situation as far as the conditions of schools in Pakistan are concerned, particularly those situated in rural areas. According to a research report, Alarming Situation of Girls Education in Pakistan, the national literacy rate is 46 per cent, and the literacy rate for girls is 26 per cent and for women 12 per cent, though this figure includes those people also who can write their own names only. In the two regions, hit hardest by militancy and extremism — Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan — the female literacy rate is between 3 and 8 per cent.
According to statistics given in the World Bank 2008 report, Pakistan enrolled 83 girls for every 103 boys in primary schools. The primary completion rate for girls was only 58 per cent as compared to 70 per cent for boys. Of the 6.8 million currently estimated out-of-school children in Pakistan, at least 4.2 million are girls. Only 35 per cent of rural women above the age of 10 had completed primary education (PLSM, 2008).
Another report revealed that the literacy rate in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) is in very deplorable condition, with 29.5 per cent males and three per cent females being literate.
According to statistics, released in 2010 by the Federal Education Ministry, the total number of primary schools in Pakistan is 146,691. Of these, 43.8 per cent schools are for boys, 31.5 per cent for girls and the remaining 24.7 per cent schools provide mixed enrolment for both boys and girls. At the secondary level, there are 14,000 lower secondary schools, with 5,000 for girls, and 10,000 upper secondary schools, with only 3,000 for girls.
Thus, Pakistan has fewer schools for girls than for boys. At the provincial or country level, there are also more boys’ schools than girls’ schools. This disparity is more pronounced in rural areas, as is evident from the above mentioned example of Tehsil Fort Abbas of the Punjab.
Prof Ghulam Shabir wonders how come an educated and developed society can be established if we keep depriving half of our population of its right to education? Every year, a number of educational schemes and projects are announced in the annual budget, but they fail to bring about any visible change, says the chairman of Media Studies, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur. It seems most of these schemes and projects fail to see the light of the day, otherwise all Amnas of the country should have availed an opportunity until now to get education in their own locality schools, equipped with all facilities and trained teachers of all subjects, of course.