SHC tells law officer to hold consultation for implementation of free education law

By Jamal Khurshid

The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Wednesday directed a federal law officer to convene a meeting of relevant officers of the education department to discuss the schemes and proposals for the implementation of the Sindh Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2013.

Hearing petitions filed by rights activists and organisations seeking the implementation of the 2013 law, a division bench of the SHC headed by Justice Mohammmad Ali Mazhar inquired the federal law officer about the government response to proposals of the petitioners’ counsel for effective implementation of the law.

The federal law officer sought time to seek instructions from the quarters concerned on the counter proposals submitted by the petitioners’ counsel with regard to the security of public and private educational institutions. The petitioners had submitted before the high court that the proposed action plan should be implemented besides allocation of funds for the purpose of enforcing security measures at the schools.

The petitioners also suggested that boundary walls of schools be up to 10 feet in height in all the public and private schools. The law officer submitted that he would convene a meeting of the relevant education officials and the petitioners’ counsel to discuss the proposals for the implementation of the law.

The SHC directed the law officer to convene a meeting and submit a compliance report on August 17. During earlier hearings, the high court was informed that as many as 6,866 public schools across Sindh had been closed due to lack of teachers, while 7,974 schools were unviable.

The school education secretary informed the high court that the posts of 32,510 primary schoolteachers and 14,039 junior elementary schoolteachers were vacant in different districts of the province.

The bench was informed that the Sindh cabinet had approved an online policy for the transfer and posting of the teaching staff. According to this new policy, teachers would be allowed to be transferred only from the schools with surplus teaching staff to the institutions with a shortage or complete lack of instructors.

The school education secretary said the process of reopening viable schools through the transfer of teachers from the schools where teaching staff was in excess was under way, and that this would result in resuming educational activities at a number of schools in the province.

He added that the remaining viable schools would be reopened through the process of new recruitment of teachers via the testing service of the Sukkur Institute of Business Administration.

He also told the bench that the recruitment policy had been notified and advertisements for the recruitment of primary schoolteachers and junior elementary schoolteachers had been published in newspapers. He added that the recruitment of teachers would help reopen closed schools.

During the earlier hearings, the SHC was also informed that the provincial government was taking several steps for enrolling the out-of-school children through different education projects with collaboration with Unicef, World Bank, Asian Development Bank and other global agencies.

The school education secretary said steps would be taken to improve the quality of education, curricula and textbooks, as well as governance and human resource management at the schools. Regarding the security of the schools, the secretary said that the government was making efforts to provide foolproof security at all the public and private schools.