ISLAMABAD: The sorry state of our country’s schools was laid bare on Wednesday as a report by a government-run institution revealed that at least 30 per cent of all public sector primary schools were being operated with just one teacher on their staff.

The 110-page report, dubbed the ‘Pakistan Education Atlas 2015’, was launched on Tuesday by the Academy of Educational, Planning and Management’s (AEPAM).

Maintaining that the quality of education was a big concern for all public sector schools, the report showed that out of a total of 124,284 primary schools in the country, there were at least 36,927 single-teacher schools: a staggering 30 per cent of all schools in the country.

The report reveals that Punjab has 6,415 single-teachers schools, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has 4,559, Fata has 446, while Balochistan has 5,980 such schools, which is 57 per cent of all primary schools in the province.

In Sindh, 19,011 or 45 per cent of all schools are single-teacher, while the percentage of such schools in AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan are seven and 33 per cent, respectively.

The report also dwelled on the achievement tests that were administrated in subjects such as English, Urdu, Mathematics and Science on a representative sample of students from grades four to eight and said that the results of such tests were not satisfactory.

“The overall performance of students in all three subjects was not presenting a good picture,” the report said.

“Our duty is to present true figures in our reports to help policymakers bring improvements. This report is based on data provided by the provinces,” said Nasir Amin, in-charge of the National Education Management Information System (NEMIS) told Dawn.

He said that the provincial and federal governments had to put a special focus on improving school education.

“The overall situation is not satisfactory as over six million children are still out of school and over 36,000 schools are each being run by a single teacher,” he said.

Speaking at the launch, Additional Secretary Dr Allah Bakhsh Malik said the report would help government and the various stakeholders to take steps to address the issues confronting the education sector.

“It is not possible for the government to improve the quality of education without quality data,” he said.

The report, presenting details of the test results of students from grades four to eight, says that 65 per cent of the students tested were found to be below the basic level of proficiency for written Urdu and only one percent of students achieved the desired proficiency level.

In mathematics, only 16 per cent of students performed better than the mean score, while only 14 per cent of students performed above the mean score in written English. Similarly, only 14 per cent of students could pass the Science test.

Published in Dawn, September 17th, 2015

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