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Thursday March 28, 2024

Sindh’s innovative eco-friendly schools being badly managed

By Jan Achakzai
February 20, 2020

The federal and provincial governments are not doing enough in raising taxes with the view to allocate adequate percentage of the GDP for education, it is well documented. The dismally low allocation puts education on a constant decline: public sector education is in ruin, and nobody challenges the mafia in the private sector.

On the other hand, people also fail to realise that they will have to pay taxes first.

Zooming in on the larger picture of the challenges of education, specifically Sindh and Balochistan are struggling to address fundamental problems of the system. From literacy standards to dropouts to ghost schools and ghost teachers, the system is beset with enormous issues and above all lack of political will to address those issues.

But surprisingly, new ideas like environment friendly infrastructure in schools and climate education studies have sneaked into Pakistan not only at the debate level but also at policy level. For example, the Sindh government recently attempted an innovative idea in the education sector called “Green Technology Schools”, only to find out later its capacity constraints in addressing the red tap of bureaucratic management of the project.

The prime purpose was to transform schools in accordance with the needs of the environment – a concept widely popular in the West meant to develop environmentally friendly infrastructure including use of environment friendly technology within schools.

According to NEMIS (National Education Management Information System) -- a web based data management portal which collects data and information from the education sector) for the year 2016-17, the schools in the Sindh province faced significant infrastructural challenges. The lack of the most basic facilities in schools is indicative of the challenge in ensuring access to quality education for children of the province. In order to address these shortcomings, Sindh took a lead in becoming the first province to introduce environmentally friendly green schools structures by using light gage steel.

But the scheme though conceived, planned and executed by the Sindh government, ran into bottlenecks. The project consisting of 50 new schools had to be put on hold after only completing 21 schools. The Government of Sindh could not even functionalise these completed schools which were to be called “English Medium Schools” and “Comprehensive Schools at district level”.

Here is the main reason why the problem occurred: the lack of agreement within the Sindh Education and Literacy Department on operational model, i.e., either to give these schools to EMOs or operate through government’s existing staff, remains a critical factor in operationalizing these wonderfully constructed schools.

Removing bottlenecks in running these environmentally friendly schools, addressing red-tapism issues and ensuring to raise the standards of other schools in the public sector by providing environmentally friendly facilities should be the way forward.

Apart from proficiently working on eco-friendly infrastructure in schools, another missing link is of climate change education: theoretically, syllabus reform incorporating environmental and climatic changes is one such proposal, on which many experts agree. Secondly, the HEC needs to set up MSc, MPhil and PHD programmes for students focusing on climate change. Every student graduating from the university should be tasked to plant at least five trees; scholarships should be awarded to the best students who want to pursue climate studies in the best universities of the world. Private schools also should encourage parents to bring saplings equivalent to birthdays of their kids to schools. New legislation can ensure other activities as well. Including water preservation as Pakistan is increasingly water stressed country and urgent efforts are needed to save water from being wasted. Agriculture, being water intensive, needs to learn from other countries to switch over to strategically smart water irrigation systems.

Referring back to the environment friendly infrastructure component, if the Sindh government succeeds in addressing the downside of the new scheme, it will be pioneering a new model in Pakistan’s education sector to bring at par the neglected schools with adequate environmental standards. It will be a great service to the people of Sindh, indeed. But the challenge of lack of seamless management has to be addressed once and for all. The Sindh government will be credited if it succeeds to (a) implement the innovative project widely, and (b) remove their flawed management issues.

The lesson from this new experience should be extended to other provinces. The greener school structures can be used in Balochistan in particular where basic schools facilities are at the lowest ebb, to be supported with climate education reforms.

(The writer is a geopolitical analyst, a politician from Balochistan, and ex-adviser to the Balochistan government on media and strategic communication.)