Islamabad: Of Sindh’s 49,103 schools, 5,922 are without basic facilities like toilets, drinking water, electricity or boundary wall while 37,705 have only one of these facilities.
According to a reported presented in the Sindh Cabinet recently, of the province’s total 49,103 schools (primary, middle, elementary and high) less than 10 per cent can boast of having a science teacher while around 70 per cent of these schools are without laboratories.
For years, education has been on the back burner and the province is lagging behind in education, particularly in Science and Mathematics, which is considered the basic component of school education, said head of Thar Education Alliance (TEA), Partab Rai Shivani while talking to Gulf News on Sunday.
In the province during the last decade, the situation has further deteriorated, he said, adding that TEA had been pushing the matter with the authorities and a number of ‘science festivals’ were also organised in districts of interior Sindh to make people realise how important education of science and mathematics is for the students.
Shelter-less & one-room schools
Partab said poverty as well as the dilapidated state of school buildings was also a major cause of people’s lack of interest in sending their kids to these institutions.
Sharing the figures of the education ministry’s report he told 4,364 schools in the interior Sindh were without shelter while 10,516 were working in single room.
Similarly there were 18,660 schools where only one teacher was available while 12,136 were without any teachers.
6 million children out of school
While the report claims there were 4.2 million out of schoolchildren in Sindh, Partab Shivani said the number could be much higher and according to Alif Alaan an NGO working for education 6 million children in Sindh are out of school. Formal and non-formal education both have been a grossly neglected area.
39 per cent literacy rate in girls
Girls’ education in Sindh is also dreadfully low, at 39 per cent, while boys’ ratio is 61 per cent. The general literacy in the province is 62 per cent, which is again one point lower than the last year’s at 63 per cent, said Partab.
After conducting science festivals successfully for boys, TEA is planning to organise Science, Technology Engineering Maths (STEM) festivals for girls this year. “We are now focusing on raising girls’ education level in this particular direction,” he said.
Referring to Standardised Achievement Test (SAT) that is conducted by the Sindh government every year for students of 5th and 7th grades, Partab said the overall output of students was below 30 per cent particularly the girls score was even worse. Through STEM festivals for girls we shall raise awareness and highlight the issues of lack of facilities, science teachers and labs etc at girls schools and private institutions will also be asked to invest in girls education, he further said.
