Pakistan: ''A utopian law''

THE FRONTIER POST

The Sindh Assembly unanimously adopted on Wednesday a law for making education free and compulsory in the province for all children between the five and 16 years of age. And the lawmakers were jubilantly in a self-congratulatory mould. But have they crucially worked out the nitty-gritty envisaged by the law to achieve the cent per cent education of this age group by the year 2015 as prescribed by this legislation? For, laws often fail to deliver if they have too much of unrealism and idealism about them. And that holds good for this piece of legislation, as well. Obviously, for achieving the stated objective in such a short span of time, an enormously expanded physical schooling infrastructure, a very large number of trained teachers and a huge financial outlay would be necessarily needed. But if the lawmakers are banking on the schooling system existing as today in the province to accomplish the feat, what to talk of 2015, the objective would remain unachieved even by the year 15 of the next century. Unarguably, the main burden of achieving this objective is to be borne by the state-run schooling apparatus. But what actually exists of it on the ground in the province is a big shame on a schooling system. Not only it is starkly inadequate; it is malfunctioning woefully, too. If the state-run schooling in urban Sindh could generously be labelled as barely passable, in the interior it is just in rot. Rural schools without even a building are no rarity. They are a common sight. Holding classes under the shades of tree in summer and under the open sky in winter is a norm over there, as is sitting on the bare ground without even a mat. But then even quite very many urban schools have no furniture worth the name. Not even toilets; in cases, no drinking water facility either. Schools with science laboratories are routine all over. And a library in both the urban and rural schools is an unheard-of phenomenon. Worst, the state-run schooling system in the province is virtually a dumping ground of the political appointees. In huge numbers, teachers have been foisted on the system by way of political patronage, not for any qualifications at all to teach. Teacher absenteeism is consequently rampant, with the teachers moonlighting elsewhere as full-time employees, visiting their schools only sporadically to teach and regularly every month to pick up their pay cheques. Numerically, teacher absenteeism in the province, particularly in its countryside, is as phenomenal as are the ghost schools with which it abounds. Politics has indeed dug deep inroads into its state-run schooling system. So much so, instead of expanding the system, the present provincial government shut down hundreds of schools its predecessors had established. Those, it contended, were launched for political considerations, not for their usefulness. But the local populations were sour and angry. They cried that those schools were opened up in response to their deeply-felt needs and demands to educate their children. They protested vehemently. Yet this provincial government didn't listen and dealt the fatal blow to those nearly 1,000 unlucky schools. Expecting that such a dilapidated state-run schooling system would help attain the objective of hundred percent education of school-age children in the next two years could thus only be an idealist's vision, if not an idiot's wild dream. And hoping that the largely unregulated and unmonitored private enterprise in education would share the burden in achieving this otherwise laudable objective could only be a fanciful thought, too. The private enterprise in education has visibly turned into a stark commercial venture in the province as elsewhere in the country. The lawmakers may have fixed quota for enrolment of poor children by private schools and may have even prescribed punishments for violations thereof, their owners are sure to resist it and evade it. Indeed, this stipulation has made only for official corruption, not for any worthwhile help coming forth. The lawmakers have declared it compulsory for the parents, too, to send their children to school. But this is on paper. On the ground, it would be very hard to enforce, given the financial stringencies of disadvantaged poor parents, who make up the bulk of our population, even in Sindh. Punishments won't do. After all, jails are not going to be filled with defaulting parents who won't be able to pay up the lawyer's fees for their own release. Only incentives, monetary or otherwise, would work. But it is unknown if anyone in the provincial administration has thought of it and worked out how much will it cost the provincial treasury until the objective of cent per cent education of the province's school-age children is achieved. In any case, now that the provincial hierarchy has taken the plunge, it must carry it to its logical conclusion. It should set up a task team to work out a comprehensive plan on how to go about this venture so that when the new government comes in it embarks on it forthwith. The objective is very noble, and achieved it must be at any rate.