WHILE the world is advocating free and open access to information, the Punjab school education department is stubborn in terms of hiding all information and creating confusion among the public and the stakeholders – besides cheating the chief minister with information and figures that do not match ground realities.

As the school education department has taken a gigantic task of preparing a bill for legislation to implement the Constitution’s Article 25-A that offers free and compulsory education to children aged between 5-16 years, school education secretary Aslam Kamboh is painting a picture that says “All is well” and intentionally not realising the burden that can help in taking informed decisions.

Misled by the department, education minister Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman is making statements that there are only 400,000 out-of-school children in Punjab. While, Mr Kamboh himself is saying Punjab has 108,000 schools (60,000 public and 48,000 private) and there is no need to set up any new school. He says the government has recruited graduate, postgraduate and PhD qualification teachers including those, who were serving in elite private schools, and can compete in terms of imparting quality education on a par with private schools. More surprisingly, the school education secretary is boasting that the department will show ideal 1-29 teacher-pupil ratio after Eidul Fitr. The school education department, during the three-year tenure of Aslam Kamboh, has kept all information secret – take the example of school education data collected by the Programme Monitoring and Implementation Unit (PMIU) and research studies conducted on the results of class-V and VIII organised by the Punjab Examination Commission.

The only authentic data on school education scene so far available to media was the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) surveys conducted and published by the South Asia Forum for Education Development (SAFED) in 2010 and 2011. The survey reports had painted pathetic pictures of Punjab education indicators. The ASER 2011 report launched early this year had reported that 16.1 per cent school-going age children were not attending any school in Punjab. The out-of-school children included seven per cent dropped-out children. As much as 21.8 per cent of five-year age children, when one expects children to be enrolled in some education facility, were also found out-of-school.

The report also revealed that the children, who were attending schools, were showing poor learning competencies. The assessment of students’ learning levels exposed that more than half of the tested children could not even read a sentence in Urdu, while 66 per cent children failed to read a sentence in English of Grade-II level. As high as 52 per cent children could not do two-digit subtraction sums with carry whereas substantial 70 per cent 5-16 years age children were found unable to do three-digit division sums.

While, the school education department is toeing the line of 400,000 out-of-school children, on a question, Commission for Compulsory and Free Education chairman Justice Khalilur Rehman Khan (retired) informed the media in a meeting that there were seven million out-of-school children in Punjab.

Justice Khan agreed that correct information and data must be brought forth to plan accurately. He committed that the commission would give media free access to information.

Commission member MNA Saira Afzal Tarar also voiced for open access to information. However, a school education department senior official told Dawn that the political government did not want that exact information should be disseminated.

Since, it is election year, he said, the government would be exaggerating everything to woo the masses.

Stakeholders and civil society organisations say the school education department’s enrolment campaigns were always a paper work and the efforts of bringing children to schools die soon afterwards as the public schools (infrastructure and quality of teaching) do not have capacity to retain children. “Children remain out-of-school, while their registration during enrolment campaigns makes school education department’s day,” a schoolteachers’ association leader said. The stakeholders agree that the number of out-of-school children and learning abilities of those attending schools pose a great challenge to the Punjab government and demand massive investment as well as sincerity to bring qualitative improvement in terms of tangible and objectively assessed deliverables.

Punjab Governor Sardar Latif Khan Khosa, in his order on a representation on Aug 13, has also directed the school education department secretary to ensure proficiency in the schools, which were in dire need of improvement in educational standards, upgradation of existing and provision of missing facilities and augmentation of learning objectives as well as their fulfillment for better attainments of those enrolled besides forestalling drop-outs with impending threats of missing the benchmarks and targets of Millennium Development Goals within the province of Punjab.

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THE Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA) has launched a national Roll Out plan for the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) – a rural household based learning survey – in all 135 districts of Pakistan.

This citizen-led survey will target 5-16 years of age children’s learning levels and test their reading and numeracy for Grade-II and III levels. For the field survey, the ITA is mobilising volunteers to assess 30 villages per district and 20 households in each village.

The ASER survey was piloted in 11 districts in Punjab, Sindh and Islamabad Capital Territory in 2008-9. The survey covered 32 districts in 2010 and 85 districts in 2011 across the country.

While, the ASER will be annually undertaken until 2015 across Pakistan, many organisations have joined hands with the ITA including Department for International Development, Foundation for the Open Society Institute, Sindh Education Foundation, Right to Play, British Council and National Commission for Human Development.

Speaking at ASER Roll Out plan, ITA Director Programmes Baela Raza Jamil said the survey would assess children’s learning levels in 600 households in each of the 135 districts in the country through 9,000 volunteers. She said the data collected through the survey would be important in terms of realising the ground realities in school education sector and taking measures to improve education outcomes.

She said the previous ASER survey reports were now being discussed by Economic Survey of Pakistan, education departments, politicians as well as at global level.

For the cause of education, she said the ITA and partner organisations had successfully completed One Million Signature campaign to build pressure for legislation for free and compulsory education for children aged between 5-16 years under Article 25-A of the Constitution. She said the ITA was also planning to launch another One Million Signature Campaign to collect signatures of out-of-school children. “Without education and knowledge, the 21st century cannot belong to Pakistan,” said Ms Jamil. – mansoormalik173@hotmail.com