CHIEF Minister Shahbaz Sharif last week inaugurated second Daanish School in Hasilpur tehsil, Bahawalpur, with full pomp and show, featuring touchy moments as he (the chief minister) cried with an underprivileged girl who got admission to her dream school.

Amna Mahmood, a Class-VI student, cried after reading her early life story in English. In his speech, the chief minister said millions of Amnas were suffering the same plight, as they craved for meal, medicine and shelter. He said the Daanish School would offer fatherly and motherly treatment to 220 young students - 110 boys and as many girls - admitted to the first Class-VI session.

The two Daanish schools established in Rahim Yar Khan and Hasilpur have been made functional, while the third one is scheduled to be formally launched in Chishtian, Bahawalnagar, within two weeks. Each Daanish School campus, worth around Rs1 billion, consists of separate academic campuses and hostels for boys and girls and has an estimated Rs21 million annual operating expenditure. The government will be spending some Rs15,000 a month per child to offer them quality education through the usage of modern resources of teaching and methodologies by well-qualified and well-trained teachers.

Pointing to the criticism that he was facing for establishing such expensive schools, the chief minister became emotional and said this school was not for children belonging to elite families but hundreds of thousands of boys and girls like Amna.

Everyone present at the ceremony including foreign dignitaries, ministers, local political leaders and lucky children's parents lauded the chief minister's determination. The chief minister said: “I did not commit the crime of rental power or loot Punjab Bank and NICL.” He said if he was given this money, he would have established Daanish schools across Punjab.

However, the chief minister's emotional speech did not move some of those present at the ceremony including his critics for the reason that he simply ignored the basic needs of “millions of Amnas” who were unable to find a school that could offer them simple academic environment and bring them out of dark clouds of illiteracy.

The critics believe that flashy projects like Daanish schools cannot even create a stir in improving the education and literacy indicators touching humiliating low rankings. Pakistan is just ahead of Afghanistan among all South Asian countries in terms of education indicators. Learning levels of most students in public schools are much below their class-wise standards.

The Punjab Literacy and Non-Formal Basic Education (LNFBE) Department's five-year strategic plan for 2010-2015 says that 3.8 million children, including two million girls, of 5-9 age group were out-of-school in 2009. The number of out-of-school children from amongst 5-14 age group is even more scary - a whopping 6.5 million - and this frightening figure is on the rise!

May be the Programme Monitoring and Implementation Unit (PMIU) is either not able to gather data about school education's on ground situation or just not communicating the data to people at the helm of affairs for taking informed decisions instead of emotional ones!

When such a huge backlog is waiting for government's initiatives to improve on the ground situation, flashy projects like Daanish schools will be criticised. “There is a need to prepare a cake first than going for its toppings and embellishing,” says an educationist.

While the Punjab government is all set to fail in meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Education For All (EFA) goals by 2015, it formally recognised its failure when former Punjab LNFBE department secretary Haseeb Athar in March last year set a new target of achieving cent per cent literacy rate by 2020. Mr Athar is now heading the Punjab higher education department.

The Punjab school education department is quietly merging schools and has brought down the tally of 63,000 schools to 61,000 now. “The mergers are currently being done 'carefully' to avoid backlash. The Punjab government wants to bring down this tally to 40,000 schools so that they might be provided missing facilities and run effectively,” says school education department secretary Aslam Kamboh.

Punjab Planning and Development chairman Javed Aslam also endorses this plan, saying that most schools are opened on political grounds and have just 100 or less students. This whole equation of building state-of-the-art 'poor man's Aitchisons' and ignoring the stark realities regarding literacy rate, learning outcomes and out-of-school children is pinching those who are more loyal to the people of Punjab than the chief minister.

Mr Sharif in his speech said: “We are fooling ourselves by not providing educational opportunities to millions of children who will remain unable to decide between black and white and fact and fiction.” Stating that people would never be able to keep their heads high, he said: “We still claim we are greatest scions of Islam.”

Mr Sharif said loot and plunder was the order of the day and 80 per cent of country's resources were being used by 10 per cent of the population. He said public schools lacked facilities like furniture and toilets and many children were taking their classes under trees.

Educationists believe the government should focus on providing facilities to some 10.9 million children studying in public schools instead of going for unjust distribution of available resources and spending billions of rupees on state-of-the-art schools. They say each Daanish School will impart education to just 1,100 students in five years and they criticise the government and the chief minister for slashing the already meagre funds allocated for public schools and diverting the money to flashy projects for political gains. The educationists say the chief minister could have used these funds to strengthen some good schools in all tehsils, provide well-educated and well-trained teachers for quality education and create a positive ripple in the otherwise gloomy scenario. He should emotionally look at the case of 40 per cent of the children who get admission to public schools, but drop out before reaching Grade-V, a benchmark for admission to Daanish schools. — mansoormalik173@hotmail.com

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