EDITORIAL: In Badin district of Sindh the local administration has directed the education authorities to take action against teachers who remain absent from schools or avail undue leave. Unfortunately, the problem of teachers who regularly draw salaries but never report for duty is neither new nor confined to one or two districts.
A few days ago, Education Minister Sardar Shah disclosed that that out of some 134,000 teachers on the education department’s payroll only 34,000 perform their duties. It is not difficult to imagine what that means in terms of young people denied access to basic education, and opportunities to pursue studies at higher level and realise their full learning potential.
But the minister seemed to be concerned more about issues other than the responsibilities of his office as he said the government was ready to dismiss ghost teachers if the opposition agreed not to exploit it for political purposes. He needs to focus on tasks related to his assigned job and investigate whether these teachers actually exist, if not who draws salaries in fictitious names? Some heads should roll.
It has been quite a while since independent surveys described the deplorable conditions of public sector schools in the province. Most of them lack basic facilities, such as drinking water, toilets, electricity, even boundary walls, which serves as disincentive for young people, especially girls, to go to school. Yet there is no sign of change.
During a recent meeting of the education department, the minister informed his boss Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah that as many as 9,600 schools functioned without proper buildings, 71 of them had more than 100 students.
His solution: where students of such schools number about 40 send them to nearby government schools. It did not matter if that would leave out many young pupils who want to continue but either are they not in enough numbers or, in the case of illegibility, are unable to travel long distances.
The conditions in the ‘better’ schools are also far from adequate. As per an official report presented to the provincial government last year, less than 10 percent of all schools, from primary to high school level, have a science teacher, whilst 70 percent lack science laboratories. It is obvious from these details that education, a building block of economic development and social progress, gets least priority in the government’s scheme of things.
As result, the literacy rate in Sindh remains static. And even those who have attended primary school can barely read or write. Clearly, the government is indifferent to its constitutional responsibility to provide free and compulsory education to all children between the ages of five to 16 years. It is unclear, though, what will it take to impel this government as well as those in the other provinces to live up to that expectation.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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