Senate body concerned over state of education

Staff Report

ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on Education, Science and Technology voiced serious concerns over more than 12,000 ghost schools in the country and lack of basic facilities at thousands of educational institutions across Pakistan.

The committee, which met here on Thursday with Rozina Alam Khan in the chair, underlined the need for immediate steps to improve the situation in the education sector.

Federal Education Minister Lt Gen (r) Javed Ashraf Qazi told the committee that there were more than 12,000 schools in the country, which were not working - more than half of them in Sindh. Around 31 percent of the students enrolled in grade-I leave school without completing primary education, which is one of the highest dropout rates in the world.

According to the official statistics provided to the Senate committee, 14 percent of those enrolled in grade-I drop out in the first year, 3.7 percent between class II and III, 5 percent between class III and IV and another 8.5 percent between class IV and V.

Among these dropouts, 40.2 percent are male and 19.2 percent female students. In 2005, there were 53,481 schools in the country without boundary walls, 46,766 without drinking water facility, 81,633 without electricity and 57,216 without latrines. Around 9,776 schools do not have any building. Of these, 3,433 are in Punjab, 4,001 in Sindh, 1,214 in NWFP, 586 in Balochsitan, 292 in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), 36 in Federally Administered Northern Areas (FANA) and 215 in Azad Kashmir (AJK).

There are a total of 227,791 educational institutions in the country, 76,047 of them in the private sector. Of these, 14,123 are mosque schools, 122,349 primary schools, 38,449 middle schools, 25,090 secondary schools, 1,882 inter and degree colleges, 49 universities, 1,324 technical and professional institutions, 3,059 vocational and polytechnic institutions, 4,831 NFBE and 12,153 seminaries. There are only 354 seminaries in the public sector. Of the 281 British System institutions, only 11 are in the public sector.

NWFP, FATA and FANA are facing serious shortage of female teachers. Balochistan has 50,893 teachers - 68 percent of them male and 32 percent female. NWFP has 198,893 teachers - 128,703 of them male and 70,190 of them female. FATA has 16,584 male teachers and 5,495 female teachers. FANA has 9,363 male teachers and 5,833 female teachers.

Punjab is the only province in the country where the number of female teachers is higher than male teachers. It has 295,438 male teachers and 421,330 female teachers. Sindh has 145,673 male teachers and 145,076 female teachers. AJK has 54 percent male teachers and 46 percent female teachers.

Of the total students (33,379,578) currently studying in the educational institutions of the country, 18,981,213 (57 percent) are male and 14,398,365 (43 percent) are female. The worst gender disparity in the enrolment is in FATA, which has 605,437 students - 75 percent of them male and 27 percent female. In NWFP, 64 percent of the total 5,206,932 students are male. In Balochistan, the boys and girls enrolment ratio is also 64:36. In FANA, it is 54 percent boys and 46 percent girls.