Around 34 percent of six to 16-year-old children are out of school in Balochistan while over 77 percent children of pre-primary age do not get any form of pre-primary education in the province, reveals the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Survey 2012.
The survey shows that school-going children’s learning ability in terms of reading Urdu or regional languages, English or doing basic level of arithmetic is alarmingly poor across the country. It says that almost 92.2 percent of Class III students are not able to read Class-II level story written in Urdu or regional languages such as Sindhi and Pashto, while almost 78 percent of students cannot even read Class-II level sentences.
The report says 34.1 percent of six to 16-year-old children are out of school in Balochistan, adding that percentage of girls not going to school is higher than boys as 21 percent of girls do not attend school as compared to 13 percent of boys.
The number of children out of school declines drastically as the level of class goes up and for every eight children in Class I, only three children progress to Class X.
ASER survey 2012 has assessed learning outcomes of five to 16-year-old children, prevalence of early childhood education, volume of out-of-school children, mother’s education, role of private schools, private tuitions incidence, medium of instruction, students and teachers’ absenteeism, computer labs and libraries, missing facilities and government grants.
Its specifically-trained volunteer team that surveyed 16, 303 households in 825 villages located in 28 rural districts of Balochistan and collected detailed information on 56,375 children aged three to 16 years of age, of which 59 percent were males and 41 were percent females.
English reading and comprehension test reported that 68.1 percent of Class V students, 49.5 percent of Class VI and 40.9 percent of Class VII students could not read Class II-level English sentences – raising serious questions about the students’ learning outcomes.
The learning levels of five-16-year-old children were assessed through specifically designed language and mathematics tests, which covered language to Class II-level text and arithmetic covering up to Class III-level national textbooks. The results show that nearly 84.5 percent of children of Grade III could not read even a sentence in Urdu or their own language.
It says that 64 percent of Class V students were unable to read Class II-level text, while around 63.7 percent of children could not read sentences of the same level.
The mathematics assessment test covering up to Class III standard national curriculum, asked from Class IV students, reveal that 33.3 percent of students were able to do two-digit subtraction sums and only 16.1 percent children could solve three-digit division sums.
ASER survey reports that 34 percent of boys and 19 percent of girls were able to read at least Urdu/Sindhi/Pashto. Similarly, 35 percent of boys and 20 percent of girls were able to correctly read English language words and sentences, while 38 percent f boys and 18 percent of girls were able to do subtraction or division problems.
Referring to private tuition, the report reveals that 16 percent of all children of the school-going age were taking tuitions as compared to only 1 percent of students studying in government schools.
The data analysis also shows that 19 percent of private school students were taking tuition at Class I-level, whereas 10 percent of Class X students took private tuitions.
The report says 56 percent of private schools and 14 percent of government schools do not have useable water facility.
The ASER survey report says that government schools across Balochistan have more qualified teachers than in private schools.
