Summer camps in the city’s government schools have flopped owing to the lack of facilities due to the Education Department’s lacking interest, Pakistan Today has learnt. Low student attendance was witnessed in the camps. The teachers have been deprived of their conveyance allowance and the load shedding has been adding to the miseries of young students.
The Punjab government allowed summer camps for the government and private schools for the classes 5, 8, 9 and 10 in order to prepare students for the Punjab Examination Commission (PEC) and Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) exams. However, it has been reported that some schools are using these students as ‘labourers’ for the construction in the schools.
Provision of cold and clean drinking water for the students has also not been ensured. The camp timings are from 7 am to 10:30 am. All the government high schools of Lahore are holding the summer camps. One elementary school is running the camp in each area of the city.
Teachers claim that the Education Department was not providing additional perks to the teachers and the government had also assigned additional duties during census and polio campaigns which did not help the cause of the teachers and the students.
Denson, an English teacher at a local school, told Pakistan Today that only 20 percent students appeared in classes owing to intense heat and load shedding. He was of the view that the summer camps should not be conducted without proper arrangements. He said that the students were forced to sit in the school’s courtyard owing to load shedding. He criticized the government saying that there was no conveyance allowance for the teachers during summer camps and the unavailability of fuel was also causing problems for them. He said that academic activities were almost non-existent in schools.
Students said that though summer camps was a nice initiative by the government but the government did not provide facilities. Government asked the students to bring eatables with them in order to avoid sunstroke but the students claimed that not all the students could afford to do so.
A student of class 9 in Pakistan Model High School said that he wanted to prepare for the board exams but it was extremely difficult to attend classes during load shedding. He said that the students had to work for the construction work in the school as well.
Education Executive District Officer (EDO) Lahore Pervez Akhter told Pakistan Today that the summer camps were not compulsory for the students as the consent of the parents was necessary. The government had only fulfilled its moral obligation to provide students a chance, he said. He denied that the attendance was less than 30 percent in high schools and said that if 50 to 60 percent students turned up in the classes, the summer camps could be termed successful.
bekaaaar!!!
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