Sindh education woes

Despite the devolution of power to provincial governments, the woes of government-run educational institutions have not improved at all. A recent report prepared by the Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (I-SAPS) has revealed that 45 percent of primary schools in Sindh are functioning with only a single teacher. The spending priorities of the Sindh government are strange: 49 percent of its total development budget is being spent on secondary education while only 13 percent is spent on primary education. With 26 percent of the development funds reserved for higher education, it appears the Sindh government wants to produce an excess of matric to intermediate graduates in the current generation, with a low number of students making it to higher education and an even lower number enrolling in primary education. Such skewed spending priorities are a recipe for disaster for the public education sector. Going further, data provided by the Sindh Information Monitoring System reveals that 7,461 of the 47,394 schools in the province are without buildings, 23,241 lack electricity, 20,212 are without toilets and 23,047 schools have no drinking water. The numbers tell a sorry tale.
The tale told by Sindh education minister Nisar Khuhro to the provincial assembly on Tuesday is sorrier still. The minister said 3,729 government schools in the province remained closed, 1,677 because there were not enough teachers to staff them. Another 87 were closed due to law and order problems. Education then is in dire need of help, and there are obvious reasons for this. If one looks closer at the education budget, only 10 percent of the total education budget is allocated for new development. Out of the Rs149.5 billion spent in the education sector around 90 percent of it was earmarked for current expenditure. The development budget itself has decreased by 12 percent from Rs16.89 billion to Rs15.04 billion. The report claimed that the major increase in education budget was salaries, which means that neither has spending in monitoring the quality of teaching and testing, nor the creation of new schools and facilities been given any increase. Given the absence of basic facilities and teaching staff, the Sindh government has spent money in the wrong place. The low number of primary teachers means that a bulk of the primary education allocation lapses every year. In the last year, 67 percent of the development funds and 53 percent of the non-salary budget was unutilised. This appears to be a case of gross neglect and mismanaged priorities if not something deeper. Someone in the Sindh government needs to correct this. The future of Sindh’s children is at stake.