Despite imposing an “education emergency” in the last quarter of 2016, the Sindh government failed to make any significant impact in this sector this year.
The ‘emergency” was declared to make visible changes and improvements in the education sector across the province, but neither did the government announce any concrete policy or take practical steps to make that happen.
Ghost schools and teachers
However, the government did concede this year that the “ghost” schools and teachers actually existed in the province.
The provincial education and literacy department had launched a biometric verification campaign for teaching and non-teaching staff and identified a large numbers of employees drawing salaries without performing any duties.
An inquiry was also conducted to identify corrupt elements responsible for hiring such employees and after a long time, a detailed report was presented to the then chief minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah.
Unsurprisingly, Pir Mazharul Haq, the education minister at the time the appointments were made, was cleared from the mega scandal even though his close staffers including personal assistance were blamed for the induction of more than the sanctioned number of teachers and other employees in the department.
The then chief minister had also overlooked the summary, which recommended the termination of the accused employees, and so has the incumbent one.
Separate secretaries
After almost three years, the provincial government managed to implement one of its plans in the education sector in 2016 after devolving the education department into two sections, separating schools and colleges.
Syed Murad Ali Shah, who replaced Qaim Ali Shah, made the decision soon after declaring the education emergency. He took a solid stance of effectively splitting the department into two and appointed separate secretaries.
Murad believes that one person cannot deeply look into the affairs of both schools and colleges.
The government’s official data shows that there are 46,039 government-run schools and 271 colleges in the province.
Former secretary education Dr Fazal Pechuho was blamed for the delay in dividing the department, as he, being the brother-in-law of former president and the ruling Pakistan People’s Party’s co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari, possessed considerable influence and had thwarted the attempt to appoint two separate secretaries to separately look into the affairs of school and college during Qaim Ali Shah’s time.
Pechuho, who retained the post of the secretary of the school education department and initially also took charge as the secretary of the college education department, was later transferred to the health department. His departure had come as a “major surprise”. The secretary of the universities and boards is yet to be announced and the affairs are being dealt with on an ad-hoc basis.
Funds and vacant posts
The schools secretary will handle 46,039 public schools with a budgetary allocation of Rs1.51 billion and Rs6.86 billion for elementary and secondary education respectively. A sum of of Rs4.59 billion has been allocated for college education for 271 public colleges in the province, of which 125 are in Karachi alone.
There are over 500 posts vacant in the colleges in Karachi and overall around 2,000 vacancies need to be filled across the province. Besides, many are waiting to be promoted to the next grade and around 400 non-teaching staff vacancies also need to be filled.
Ironically, the provincial education minister had openly admitted that he failed to remove an incompetent person from the post of the regional director college. The post of RD College (Karachi) like many other administrative positions was awarded on political grounds.
The provincial government also set up a provincial Intermediate Board Committee of Chairman, which will now issue equivalence certificates to A-levels and other foreign credentials.
The decision was made to speed up the process of issuance of certificates as students across the country send their documents to Islamabad and it took almost a month to receive the papers they required.
Sindh Higher Education Commission (SHEC)
Murad Ali Shah also maintains that he had chalked out a strategy to reactivate the Sindh Higher Education Commission, which was set up in 2013.
The SHEC has only held two meetings and is yet to justify its presence.
Dr Asim Hussain, a close friend of Zardari, was appointed its chairman but now that he is behind the bar, the SHEC’s future is uncertain.
Varsities and VCs
Despite the declaration of emergency, the government failed to appoint permanent vice chancellors at the University of Karachi, the Sindh University and the Dow University of Health Sciences. These posts were handed over on a “look after” basis to vice chancellor who had completed their terms many months ago.
A search committee was formed to shortlist candidates for the posts, its recommendations have not been considered so far.
Murad Ali Shah recently said he would appoint fulltime vice-chancellors but did not mention any timeframe for this purpose.
The financial crunch at public-sector higher education institutions remained an unresolved issue in 2016 and no serious measures were taken to address them.
In February this year, the then secretary education Dr Fazlullah Pechuho had maintained that all necessary preparations to resume the National Cadet Corps (NCC) course at colleges across Sindh had been completed and Rangers officials too had been taken on board in this connection.
The NCC is a basic civil defence training course, which was provided by the armed forces in colleges until it was withdrawn by former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf in 2002.
The Sindh government had claimed that decision was made in the wake of a second attack on an educational institution in February but since then, there has been no word on the issue.
Board of Secondary Education Karachi (BIEK)
In August, the then chairman of the Board of Secondary Education Karachi, Anwar Ahmed Zai, was arrested the National Accountability Bureau over charges of corruption and misuse of powers.
Zai was considered a prominent figure and remained the chairman of BIEK for more than six years. During that period, he also served as the head of the examination board of Mirpurkhas and acting chairman of the Board of Secondary Education Karachi.
Teachers associations
The teachers’ representative bodies at the university level remained proactive against the controversial Sindh University (Amendment) 2013 while college teachers forced the government to fill the vacant posts at colleges but they failed to achieve these goals.
The teaching communities of the public sector universities have already announced a fresh series of protests against the government. They accused the Sindh government of unethically attempting to gain control of appointing vice chancellors, registrars and finance directors.
The colleges and universities teachers demanded that the provincial government should remain
the individuals still holding administrative posts despite their retirement. The provincial government and administrations of government-run universities made several claims regarding improving security measures after attacks on educational institutions across the country but practically nothing has been done so far.