59pc class-V students in Sindh can’t read sentences

Karachi
A survey conducted across Sindh has revealed that almost 59 percent students in class-V are unable to read sentences written in Urdu, English, Sindhi and Pashto - that are part of the class-II syllabus.
Launching the Annual Status of Education Report (Aser) Pakistan 2014 on Wednesday, its country coordinator Baela Raza Jameel said reading (Urdu/Sindhi/Pashto), arithmetic, English and general knowledge were used as categories in the survey.
The assessments are based on the class-II level curriculum for English and class-III for Urdu/Sindhi/Pashto languages.
In 2014, Aser teams went to 144 and 21 rural and urban districts respectively to collect information about 279,427 children (aged between three and 16 years) and 93,093 households in 4,698 villages or blocks.
Jameel, who is also the director programme of the Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA), said in rural Sindh, a survey of 727 schools in 703 villages was carried out by volunteers associated with Aser and its partner organisations.
In rural Sindh, data collectors went to 13,984 households and observed 42,297 school-going children (59 percent male and 41 percent female) aged between three and 16 years.
The proportion of out-of-school children (aged between three and five years) was 63 percent which has increased in comparison with 59 percent in 2013.
The proportion of enrolled children (aged between six and 16 years) was 73 percent in 2014 which has increased against 71 percent in 2013.
The Sindh Education Foundation (SEF) and ITA jointly organised the provincial launch of the Aser-Pakistan 2014 for Sindh to share the findings of the survey.
Jameel described Aser as a “social movement” of the educated individuals of the country. She added that Aser was a brand under which various partner organisations were working from conceptualisation to the printing of the report.
She said Aser was the largest source of statistics being quoted in the policy documents and reports on national and international levels.
Talking about the dilemma of multi-grading in classrooms, Jameel said it was alarming to know that 70 percent of students of class II, III and IV sat together in 2013 and 74 percent in 2014.
Dr Fazlullah Pechuho, the additional education chief secretary, expressed his desire for conducting a policy dialogue involving political parties, educationists and private entrepreneurs. He said the provincial government’s policy of “Adopt-a-School” was a robust one in which institutes were given chance to run schools by signing an memorandum of understanding with the government.
He also said the provincial government was framing a policy for “Early Childhood Education” as well as “Non-formal Education” to strengthen the educational system at the grassroots level using the platform of the public-private partnership mode.
Dr Muhammad Memon, a professor at the Aga Khan University’s Institute for Educational Development, gave a presentation on curriculum reforms.
He said the curriculum was a mirror that reflected the quality of education being offered to students. He further said the curriculum in Pakistan was devised on a “top-down” model with a “quick-fix” approach on a more or less the same outcomes.
He regretted that the curriculum transmitted the “official knowledge” and that was why teachers were unable to play the role of agents who invoked thoughts into students’ minds.
“With curriculum designed as such, we would be better off without teachers and make do with some preachers.”
Memon stressed the importance of the professional development of teachers to implement the curriculum if the required results were to be achieved. Memon further said Sindh would soon start assessing students not against the textbooks but the curriculum. SEF managing director Aziz Kabani said that it was inspiring to see a slight improvement in access to educational facilities and increase in literacy in the province.