PESHAWAR: The closure of government schools having low enrolment and merging them with nearby schools is seen as failure of the government in improving the standard of educational institutions in the province.
This step would belie the claims about shifting over 100,000 students from private to public sector schools.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-led provincial government had decided in October 2016 to merge the schools with low enrollment into the ones located within one kilometre radius.
The schools with less than 50 students had been warned to improve enrollment or face merger.
The management of the school having the least enrollment made hectic efforts with the help of parents and the Parent Teachers Councils to attract more students to prevent the closure/merger.
Some of the schools did improve enrollment, prompting the provincial government to claim that students from private schools had started shifting to the government institutions. However, most of the institutions failed to cross the required number and are now are facing action.
The closure of some 49 schools has already been notified in Charsadda district.
At least 43 schools, mostly of girls, are about to be closed in the provincial capital.
Many schools in other districts in the province are facing closure or merger.
A good number of schools have already been shut or have become dysfunctional across the province for a host of reasons and the provincial government is unable to reopen them.
According to the statistics collected from the Educational Management Information System (EMIS) and Independent Monitoring Units, there are a total of 23,632 primary schools in the province.
Some 20,575 of them are government primary schools, 1,013 are Masjid-Maktab schools and 2,044 are community primary schools.
As many as 647 are closed schools and 144 are dysfunctional and even the Education Department officials were unable to differentiate between the closed and non-functional schools.
An official of the Education Department told The News that the main reason behind the closed schools was the complete demolishment of their buildings by devastating earthquake and floods.
Those schools could not be rebuilt despite lapse of several years. Some are also closed due to land disputes and other issues, he said.
The number of closed schools would now rise after merger of the hundreds of schools across the province on the basis of low enrollment.
The decision of merger has been widely criticised by parents and academicians as they believe it would deprive the poor students especially girls of getting education as most of the schools being closed were for girls.
Some educationists said the government should raise the standard of state-run schools to make the parents get their children enrolled there.
They said it was strange that the number of private schools was rapidly increasing but the ones in the public sector were being closed down.
“It shows that the government has been unable to improve the standard of education,” said an academician.
It is a fact that the government schools have not been set up at short distance from one another so it would be difficult to find a bigger school within one kilometer radius of the one which is being closed.
It would be difficult for the parents to send daughters to schools at even one kilometer distance from their homes.
The normal age of primary school children is from five to 12 years and of course those studying in government schools in this age hail from poor families and can’t afford transport for their children.
Therefore, majority of the children would be forced by their parents to stay home instead of going to a distant school, said a senior journalist dealing with education.
This decision would also ruin the buildings of the schools being merged and result in loss of the property and thus waste the government resources. These buildings have been built at a cost of millions of rupees.
The adjustment of teachers and other staff members of the merged schools would be another big issue as in the schools already closed the teachers have been asked to report to the Education Department so that new assignments could be given to them.
