Prioritisation needed
Annual Status of Education (ASER) report 2011, released recently, while talking of reading ability in Urdu/Sindhi, says: “Class wise analysis of reading ability show that only 41.2 percent of Class 3 students were able to read sentences, while, nearly 83 percent could not read a story.” Pg. 71. If we move to English, the findings get much worse. Only 13.1 percent of Class 3 children were able to read sentences fluently and, amazingly, 29 percent of those who could read sentences did so without understanding any meaning.
The ASER survey was across 80 plus districts of Pakistan and tested almost 140,000, mostly rural, children. So, the findings are quite representative and general. It is true that, on average, children enrolled in private schools perform a little better than those in government schools, the overall numbers, for all, are bad and even in private schools only 53.3 percent of enrolled children could read Urdu/Sindhi sentences, compared to 37.5 percent of children in government schools.
Article 25A, added to the Constitution under the 18th Constitutional Amendment, recognises the right to free and compulsory education, for all children of the ages of 5-16 years, as a basic right. It will be, beginning April, two years since this Amendment has been passed. There has been little or no progress in implementing this Amendment and extending this right. More than 15 million, only a little less than the population of Karachi, 5-16 year olds, remain out of school in the country. And equally importantly, if not more so, the quality of education that we are imparting to the children who are fortunate enough to be able to make it to schools, across the board, is quite poor. Will this prepare the youth of the country for the future? Will this allow Pakistan to go down the development path with leaps and bounds? Will this education system produce the active and informed citizenry in Pakistan that we need? The answer is clearly no.
Although school education was mostly a provincial subject, by removing the subject of education from the concurrent list, the 18th Amendment has made it completely so. Whether the federal government bears some responsibility for implementation of 25A or not, and whether the financial implications of 25A are shared between the federal and provincial governments, though important concerns, are not the issue here. The main point is that it is now going to be the provincial governments who are going to be wholly responsible for educational provision in their domains. So, it is provincial policies that we have to look to in order to understand the priorities of the government. And if we look at these policies, especially since the passing of the 18th Amendment, the situation does not look too promising.
To take one example, the more well known educational initiatives of the Punjab, over the last few years, have been Daanish Schools, educational scholarship schemes, distribution of laptops, the formation and operationalisation of the Punjab Education Commission (PEC) and some initiatives of Punjab Education Foundation (PEF). Daanish Schools, though they have been touted as a major breakthrough in thinking and in efforts to provide ‘quality’ education to selected poor, is a poorly thought through intervention. We have created extremely expensive schools for a few hundred students when Government of Punjab runs some 50,000 plus schools, most of which are lacking facilities or teachers in one way or the other. And even these 50,000 schools are not enough as millions of children, in Punjab, are still out of school. So, the thousands of rupees being spent on one child could have been spent on many children. It is a choice that the government is making, but a choice that it is making while having committed to implementing 25A. And clearly Daanish will also not do much for quality of education being imparted in the 50,000 government schools mentioned. Similarly, laptop distribution, scholarship scheme and PEC initiative are not addressing the access or quality issue directly.
Let me make one issue very clear. Whenever the idea of Daanish Schools and/or laptop distribution has been criticised, PML(N) supporters have come back with the response that these initiatives are surely doing something useful and good. How can they be criticised then? But this response misses the point. Daanish Schools might be excellent for the children enrolled in them, but the question is: the government has a limited amount of money available, something they never let us forget, then should we not think hard before spending this money and should it not be spent in a way that we get the maximum bang for our buck, given our priorities.
If the priority is 25A and the issue of access to quality education for all children, could we not have spent the billions that have been spent on Daanish Schools or on laptops in a better way? Our data shows that gender gap in education is large and girls drop out of schools quickly if basic facilities like a boundary wall or working toilets are not present. Could we not have prioritized these issues? Would that have been better use of money?
We know that government sector teachers are better qualified, better trained, better paid and given more benefits compared to private sector teachers in Pakistan. Yet, in terms of examination/test results, children enrolled in public sector lag behind children from private schools. This gives tremendous opportunity for designing interventions that support teachers, mentor them, tighten their accountability and monitoring/evaluation systems to get them to deliver higher quality. It seems, given the size of the public sector, this would provide us the biggest bang for the buck in terms of addressing access and quality issues. But these interventions do not seem to capture the imagination of the government. And this seems to be true of all provincial governments. There are professional development programmes in place but they are not priority programmes, with the resources, money and brain-power, needed to make them work well.
Most children in Pakistan are either out of schools or in schools that give poor quality of education. Although the state, formally, has accepted that education is a basic right, the evidence over the last couple of years since the Amendment has been passed, suggests that there is little seriousness in addressing the issues of access and quality and more populist policies, as opposed to more substantive ones, are taking the resources. This might be politically savvy, but it is not going to lead to educational outcomes that Pakistan needs and has constitutionally committed to.
The writer is an Associate Professor of Economics at LUMS (currently on leave) and a Senior Advisor at Open Society Foundation (OSF). He can be reached at [email protected]
It says,"Class wise analysis of reading ability show that only 41.2 percent of Class 3 students were able to read sentences, while, nearly 83 percent could not read a story."
But those who are capable of reading sentence may read the story as well because story is always composed of sentences. what else is in the story other than sentences that poor children can't read?
SAdly, Dr Bari is among those 29 percent who can read english sentences without understanding any meanings.
This shows SORRY STATE of education in Pakistan.
Interestingly, ASER team did not visit a single school where all children were capable of passing those imposed tests. Do all the Pakistani schools perform at this level? Obviously, No proper school would have allowed unofficial ASER members enter into the school premises and malign children on the basis of these tests.
Just to clarify, ASER is a household survey…but the team gets information on which school children go to. See the ASER website for more details.
I am not aware if educational research about children's outcomes is based on household survey anywhere in the world.
ASER assesses children and categories them on 4 levels of competencies; beginners, letters, words, sentences and story. The difference between the story and sentences in the ASER assessment tool is that the sentences are at a very basic level while the story text is at a bit advanced level. If you look at a class 2 level book and a class 3 level book you can easily see the difference between the two texts although both class 2 and class 3 books have sentences and stories in them. So yes, stories are composed of sentences but the level of the text can be quite different. Please visit the website http://www.aserpakistan.safedafed.org/ for more clarification on ASER methodology, assessment procedures and the complete report
ASER is survey and not a census which means that it is based on a representative sample as Dr. Faisal Bari has mentioned in his article. Not all children are tested but a representative sample is tested. ASER surveys both private and public schools and the teams are allowed to visit and survey any school in any district/village of Pakistan and this is in collaboration and with permission from the various provincial governments. ASER team has signed MOU’s with all the provincial governments which not only support ASER but also allow the ASER teams to visit schools in their districts. The ASER report has been endorsed by the honorable chief ministers of Punjab, KP, Gilgit-Baltistan and AJK. These letters of endorsements are also available on the website. ASER is done on such a huge scale across Pakistan that it would be silly to assume that a survey conducted at such an enormous scale would be done so without the help or support from the government.
please see page 53 of ASER report. There seems to be difference between sentences and story level.
I mean "no difference".
Now we have many PhDs thanks to idiot Ata-urrehman. According to his stats, Pakistan is close to becoming a super power.
It seems Dr. Bari Did not see the report in details. It is all about data about schools, enrollment, teachers, their attendance, and many other school related issues. Less emphasis on household information.
I think challenging data and surveys is always healthy but after one does one's homework. Fortunately this survey is citizen led where no citizen can participate in the survey unless they have been trained rigorously in the methodology and understanding of the nature and rationale of the survey at the household and school level over two days( a holiday and a working day).
For all citizens (minimum education Matric/Inter) the ASER team is always ready to come to the ASER centre/office in Lahore 41 L Model Town Extension for all serious queries and conversations. I would encourage Ms. Saima Arif to come across to the ASER team for her questions, apprehensions and clarifications as the survey takes place with many stakeholders and peer reviewers in public and private sector as well as technical reviews of tools, methods and data interpretation across Pakistan and in the region . There is always room for improvement each year as it is an annual survey until 2015. It is an inclusive survey of the citizens by the citizens and for the citizens…time to wake up and take action based on evidence..!
Thanks Madam Baela Raza Jamil for showing your concern over my comments.
In recent days, I came across many newspaper articles by famous columnists where the references from ASER Survey have been used to show the maligned face of education in Pakistan. It was quite amazing to note that no one bothered to look at how this data has been achieved and compiled. Though very little effort is required to prove that this survey is misleading and it is full of logical bugs. I wonder if your organization has not hired some professionals who can analyze these outcomes before results are made accessible on web for the whole world.
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