Whatever Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah described about progress and achievements in the provincial education sector during the government’s three-year tenure on Thursday, was in stark contrast to the picture portrayed by his daughter, former Education Secretary Naheed Durrani, around a month earlier.
On April 21, Durrani had told the Sindh Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that only 9,000 out of 50,000 government schools in the province were proper educational institutions with respect to the building conditions and facilities provided. With the province having a teaching staff of 150,000, fifty percent of the teachers had efficiency similar to matriculation failures while the majority of remaining staff work on other part-time jobs.
Shah, on the assembly floor, stated that the government has been able to attain many milestones in the education sector as over 4,000 schools were provided with missing facilities, additional classrooms, etc under the TOP mechanism while 13,800 teachers were recruited on purely merit-based, third party testing system. He continued that more than 4 million children received free textbooks every year and over 400,000 female students received stipends while 40,000 SMCs were given grants.
The former Education secretary had earlier stated that around 41,000 schools were either one-room schools or operating in chapras (small, crude shelters), whereas, the remaining schools had lost education standards due to teachers’ inefficiency and their absence from duty. Durrani had also painted a similar situation in the colleges of the province. According to her, college education was the worst-affected due to political interference.
Out of 260 government colleges in the province, around 100 colleges were without staff, as the teaching and non-teaching staff using political influence got them transferred to other colleges for convenience. She went to say that even college administrators were appointed on political pressure without taking in account if they were able to run administrative affairs or not.
On Thursday, the chief minister told the Sindh lawmakers that the government has established a university in Lyari, Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University, which is in advanced stages of completion and classes would commence from September 2011. Four community colleges are being set up at Dadu, Naushero Feroze, Jacobabad and Khairpur in collaboration with IBA Sukkur, while two engineering colleges have also been established with one at Khairpur, he added.
However, the chief minister’s daughter had told the PAC that most of the subject specialists, especially mathematics, English and physics, were either incompetent or irregular in colleges. Expressing concern over the standard of education and the deteriorating situation of government schools, PAC Chairman Jam Tamachi had suggested that the government should auction schools which were non-functional as they were being used as warehouses and guesthouses by the influential in their respective areas.