Monitoring education

The authorities were unable to initiate an effective action plan against the cases reported, says a report of the Independent Monitoring Unit in Swat for the month of March this year.
The report further states, “The actions of DSC meetings were mostly limited to ‘enquiries’ and ‘explanation calls’ and no proper action has been taken yet.” DSC is the district steering committee for education headed by the district commissioner of every concerned district.
When the PTI-led government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa devised a close monitoring system within the education department for improvement in the system, people like me appreciated it as a laudable move to bring some changes such as teachers’ attendance, quality, physical infrastructure and access within our fragile education system. The KP government started the programme under the name of the Independent Monitoring Unit with the financial assistance of the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID).
At the beginning this initiative sent shockwaves across the dysfunctional state education department in the province. The officials employed in the programme were new and seemed very active in monitoring and reporting the cases. But as is usual the zeal gradually waned and consequently things again came to where they were. Thus the mechanism is gradually petering out.
The mechanism has a few technical flaws within it. Among them the most critical is the reporting system. The monitors under the mechanism have to report to the district and provincial management authorities in education who are usually the ones thought to be responsible for the mess-up. Our education officials either shy from any remedial measure or are in complicity with the black sheep within their own herd.
The Independent Monitoring Unit in Swat laments: “The education department is not serious in taking action on our reports. Though they have initiated some enquires but they are not satisfactory. So far they have almost neglected the reports of the IMU and show resistance in solving the issues reported. If we have to solve the highlighted issues the education department must cooperate with the IMU...”
In our society everybody, from a politician to a village chief, has his ‘own people’ everywhere. No elected politician ever tries to take action against his ‘own people’, no matter what harm they cause to the people and the country. The powerful members of provincial assemblies and ministers use remote areas, such as the valleys of upper Swat, as launching pads for the new appointments of their touts and cronies.
It is usually thought that mostly female teachers remain absent from schools. In faraway villages where these teachers come from other areas this may be true but the overall findings in the reports of the IMU show that the trend of absenteeism is greater in male than in female teachers.
The reports suggest that an overall 26 percent of students remain absent from school.
In Swat there is one teacher for 40 students on average but there are wide gaps from area to area and school to school. For example in one primary school there are three teachers for 24 students whereas another school has only one teacher for 364 students. Similarly in a third school there are three teachers but no students at all. Appointments at these schools are totally political. There are many schools with one or two teachers. Most school buildings of primary schools are made of two rooms with six classes/grades.
The report also says that the ‘authorised leaves’ taken by teachers have been increasing since October 2014, when the IMU was set up. It seems that the teachers have devised this as a counter-mechanism to avoid being reported for being absent ‘unauthorised’. Just the formality of writing an application and marking ‘casual leave’ in the attendance register is done to give a legal cover to the otherwise unjustified absenteeism from school.
The report further states that administrators at high and higher secondary schools are in collusion with officials in the education department because both enjoy the same privileges.
With such a dismal scenario one wonders if the Independent Monitoring Unit is worth keeping with the existing terms of references and procedures. It needs to be totally independent of the department. People need to be sensitised and empowered because they are the primary beneficiaries; and are responsible for the future of their children. Otherwise this whole exercise will not only lose its worth but will also dent the meagre trust the international community holds in us.
The fall of the Independent Monitoring Unit is well evident from its own words, “Comparing the data collected in the previous six months with the data of March [2015], we observe no major shifts in the key indicators.”
The writer heads IBT, an independentorganisation dealing with education and
development in Swat. Email: ztorwali@gmail.com