Education authorities prepare Rs4b plan to overhaul school education

Many schools in urban and rural areas of Islamabad lack basic facilities and a new summary of Rs4 billion has been prepared to seek funds to ‘overhaul the dormant system’.

The Federal Directorate of Education (FDE), which oversees and supervises over 400 schools in urban and rural Islamabad, itself is the source and cause of this parasitic and dysfunctional system, as the top hierarchy in the education branch barely spares time to fix the faults, except for directors, deputy directors and the director-general ferrying between the CADD and the FDE to sort out bundle of official files that mainly related to promotions, perks and privileges and other such matters.

Upon visit to the FDE, one often finds top officials missing from their seats and upon inquiry one gets the answer “The boss has gone to CADD”. Seldom officials visit schools to evaluate and assess the state of affairs on ground.

A senior official at the FDE, who is considered to be an upright and honest official, and he has been at the FDE for the last some months, while talking to Online said that corruption, nepotism and favouritism and lack of commitment on the part of top hierarchy has taken a toll on the school and college education in Islamabad.

“Unfortunately, nincompoops have grasped their hydra-headed tentacles on the future generation and the education system. They only want status quo and personal benefits. Hardly a director, a deputy director or any other relevant official gets time (except from visiting CADD) to visit schools, which lack teachers, labs, washrooms and other basic facilities,” he said wishing not to be named.

He said that the top officials at the FDE have occupied seats with the help of unions, and in return, they don’t bother to have accountability of teachers, many of them have started private businesses while getting regular salaries from the national kitty.

In a startling disclosure, the official said that if the government and the prime minister’s daughter, Maryam Nawaz, wanted to really overhaul the education system in the country, a transparent monitoring and accountability system has to be put in place to revive the completely crippled education structure.

The official also disclosed that those teachers, who had been sacked for being political appointees in late 90s, have recently been reinstated after they won a case in the court. According to the official, the FDE, on purpose, did not follow the case vigorously as most of the reinstated teachers were close relatives, daughters and sons of the FDE officials. He said that neither an appeal was filed against the court decision, which was not only against the FDE but also has put the future of the young general at stake as their future has been given in the hands of incompetent and unskilled persons.

According to another official, a survey of schools has recently been conducted to assess the missing facilities at schools and a summary has been prepared to send it to the CADD ministry, which is another white elephant and main contributor of destructive and crippled education system in Islamabad.

While many schools have no boundary walls and their security highly vulnerable, several schools in far away and rural areas have dilapidated infrastructure also. Roads leading to these schools are almost broken down and bumpy and many teachers refuse to be deputed to schools in rural areas. While many schools in urban areas are overstaffed with a few students to tech to, several schools in rural areas are short in staff with high enrolments.

According to the new summary, Islamabad schools lack 1,736 teachers, 1,191 classrooms, 349 IT labs, 271 science labs, 1,133 water cooler, 66,000 chairs, 1,043 washrooms, 247 busses and 200 non-teaching staff.