6.2m kids still out of schools in Sindh despite increasing budget

The Sindh government claims an increase in the funds for education, but 6.3 million children are still out of school, while the number of public schools has decreased over the past two years.

Launching a report titled ‘The Political Economy of Education in Sindh in 2021’, the Hari Welfare Association (HWA) and rights activists demanded that the provincial government devise a concrete action plan to address the worsening state of education in Sindh.

The report reveals that the total number of public schools in Sindh was 49,211 in 2006-07, but that number dropped to 42,383 in 2016-17. Similarly, female schools decreased considerably from 8,958 in 2006-07 to 5,385 in 2016-17, despite such schools already being fewer — a concerning state of educational affairs.

The report reads that the Sindh Education Foundation is an example for the Sindh Education & Literacy Department that how the foundation has been providing quality education in very remote areas of the province, ensuring all the basic facilities at schools, including teacher training.

Following the 18th amendment, the Sindh government began receiving greater funds from the federal government, but instead of increasing, the number of schools has fallen. The HWA said that thousands of schools have turned into cattle pens due to sheer criminal negligence of the authorities concerned.

In September 2021, Sindh Education Minister Sardar Shah had contested the claim that the province had six million out-of-school children, but he did not provide the exact number. In July 2020, the provincial assembly had been informed by former education minister Saeed Ghani that around 6.2 million children were out of school.

The number of out-of-school children was around 6.7 million in 2017, and it has climbed rather than dropped to 6.5 million or 6.2 million. From 49,211 in 2006-07 to 42,383 in 2016-17, the number of schools has decreased.

The number of schools has not increased between 2017 and 2021, but somehow the number of enrolment has. It is not known with what magic wand the government has reduced the number of out-of-school children.

In four years, the population of children in the province has also increased, thus increasing the number of out-of-school children. The HWA expressed regret that school management committees across the province are dysfunctional.

The committees either do not exist at all or they do only on paper. At some schools these committees have been formed but do not serve the purpose for which they were constituted. According to the ‘School Education Statistics 2016-2017’ report, 90 per cent (38,219) of Sindh’s 42,383 schools have these committees.

The Sindh Right to Free and Compulsory Education Rules, which were notified in December 2016, give the committees a more significant role. Despite the chief minister declaring an education emergency in 2016, the province is yet to see any official notice announcing such an emergency.

HWA President Akram Khaskheli said the Sindh Education Department’s charge was transferred from Saeed Ghani to Sardar Shah in August 2021. Both ministers had the same education and policies for children’s education, and both did not take any concrete measures to rescue the dying education sector in 2021 or before, he added.

He regretted that the Sindh Education Profile produced by the Sindh Education Management & Information System has not been produced after its final version in 2016-2017. Similarly, he pointed out, after 2017-2018, the Pakistan Education Statistics has not published by the National Education Management Information System run by the Federal Ministry of Education & Professional Training.

The federal and provincial governments have stopped publishing data and statistics on enrolment, teachers and institutions in the province. Both reports contained statistical data for understanding the economics and politics of education in Sindh. The absence of these reports clearly reveal the ill intentions of the authorities.

Piler’s Karamat Ali and Zulfiqar Shah, the Indus Resource Centre’s Sadiqa Salahuddin, the National Commission on the Rights of Child’s Iqbal Ahmed Detho, the Peoples Labour Bureau’s Habibuddin Junaidi and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan’s Qazi Khizar Habib also spoke on the occasion.

They said that no provincial advisory has been formed yet under Section 25-A (compulsory education). A budget of Rs240 billion has been allocated for education in Sindh for 2021-22, but there are problems in full and proper utilisation, no committee has been formed at school level to deal with corporal punishment and no competent chairperson has been appointed.

They said that only 4,000 schools out of 38,000 are high schools, and these are far away from villages, which is the reason why female education has dropped, while technical and physical education centres are in worst conditions.

The provincial government did nothing to remove untrained and bad-mannered teachers. Instead, the government has been hiring contractual teachers since 2012. The school education department had created a Sindh Education Sector Plan 2019-2024, but no apparent initiatives were introduced in 2021-22 to meet the aims and targets.

In November 2021, the education department notified the revised Rules of the School Clustering Policy 2016. The revision aimed at decentralising education service delivery in Sindh through school clustering for improved education quality and access.

It also aimed at improving the province’s overall state of affairs, and providing for the decentralisation of certain administrative and financial powers to grassroots level. However, these rules are the outcome of a top-down bureaucratic approach that has often undermined children’s right to education.