Sindh shuts down 4,901 non- functional schools

KARACHI: The Sindh School Education and Literacy Department on Thursday shut down 4,901 non-viable schools in different districts of the province which according to the officials of the education department, had no proper buildings, no enrollment, and no teachers.

In two separate notifications issued on Thursday, the department has delisted these schools from the system. According to the notification, “with the approval of the competent authority and in view of field assessment jointly carried out by District Education Officers, Chief Monitoring Officers, and Coordinators of Reform Support Unit, 1459 non-viable schools that do not exist on the ground are hereby de-notified with immediate effect”.

Earlier this month, the department had published a list of such schools to give an opportunity to the public for raising objections against closure these schools. However, the department received no complaint from anyone so far. Therefore, on recommendations of the Complaint Redressal Committee constituted by the SLED removed 3,442 schools from the database of the School Education & Literacy Department. According to the data available on the SLED Reforms Support Unit website, a total of 41305 schools are currently registered in the system

According to the record, the officials had declared 5,176 schools non-available across the provinces. Of them, 1,538 did not exist, 3,579 were permanently closed schools, 5 schools were temporarily closed and 3 schools were of duplicate identity. “After processing the statistics, the number of non-viable reduced 4,901,” informed Saeed Memon, media coordinator of the provincial education minister. The schools are located been in district Badin are 402, in Dadu, the number nonviable was 233, in Ghotki 332, in Hyderabad 16, in Jacobabad 156, in Jamshoro 49, in Kamber Shahdadkot 143. The schools closed in Karachi region included 15 located in Central, 4 in East, 9 in Keamari, 7 in Korangi, 53 in Malir, 12 i South, and 14 in West.

Similarly, 170 schools were delisted from SELD system in district Kashmore. The number of such schools in Khairpur was 404, in Larkana 28, in Matiari 42, in Mirpurkhas 221, in Nausherhro Feroz 328, in Sanghar 484, in Shaheed Benazirabad 155, in Shikarpur 115, in Sujawal 308, in Sukkur 125, in Tando Allahyar 56, in Tando Muhammad Khan 123, in Tharparkar 204 in Thatta 276 and the number of non-viable schools in Umerkot was 417 which are no longer exist in the list of functional schools.