Sindh province has been facing many issues in the education system, Akbar Laghari, Secretary of Education, admitted in a report submitted to the Sindh High Court, The Sindh Narrative reported.
Laghari presented the report to the court in response to the case of ‘giving free education to children between 5 and 16 years' in the Sindh report.
According to The Sindh Narrative report, Sindh province has struggled after floods. Houses have been damaged, livestock has been finished, agriculture has been impacted, health management is depleting, and education has “deteriorated' even more after the floods.
Media and activists have raised questions over the worsening education status of Sindh. However, the report said the authorities have no response and get defensive about the issue. In response to the case of ‘giving free education to children from between five years to 16 years,' Akbar Laghari admitted that there had been a lot of issues in the education system of Sindh province.
In the report, Laghari highlighted issues like shortage of school buildings, teachers, acute shortage of furniture, absconding and absent teachers, the uneven proportion of primary and secondary schools, and governance issues. As per the report, 6,407 among 40,529 schools are “shelterless/ without a roof,” resulting in the low presence of students in these schools.
In addition, 622 schools are under construction in the current annual schemes. The rest of the schools will be constructed in the next five years. The Sindh Narrative report citing a report presented in the court said that thousands of schools had been closed for more than 10 years due to an “acute shortage” of teachers.
The report revealed that 35,487 primary school teachers are still at the final stage of recruitment, while 5,970 schools were closed earlier due to the non-availability of teachers. Meanwhile, 3884 schools have been reopened now.
According to the report, a severe shortage of furniture for many years is another reason children drop out of school often. Apart from this, about 4533 teachers remain absent from school duties. The presence of 36,102 primary schools compared to 4,427 secondary schools demonstrates the uneven structure of the education status.
The uneven structure of schools prevents thousands of students from completing their studies in high schools. Governance issues have also been highlighted in the report. Most officers lack management skills and cannot handle matters legally or adequately as District Education Officers head the education department.
Furthermore, the ‘Out of school children' issue has been highlighted in the report, and the causes behind the problem include “unwillingness of a child, expensive education, economic condition like poverty which leads to child labor and cultural reasons for girls and bad law and order situation in rural areas, which is the reason of rising safety concerns among parents.”
In the report submitted to the court, the government plans to reduce the number of ‘Out of School Children.' According to the news report, there is a high probability that the government's plan will take years, witnessing the previous records of the provincial government and the current situation of flood after effects, particularly in Sindh province.
