The Sindh government has taken exception to the Planning Commission of Pakistan’s recently released District Education Performance Index (DEPIx). The reservations were aired during a joint press conference by Education Minister Sardar Ali Shah and Universities & Boards Minister Muhammad Ali Malkani on Wednesday.
Shah said Islamabad’s institutions are acting like desk analysts who lack ground realities, and they are deliberately trying to undermine the education standards in Sindh.
He said the Planning Commission has released a one-sided report claiming Sindh’s schools to be in dilapidated conditions. Sindh has already acknowledged that 20,000 schools have been affected due to heavy rains and floods, he added.
He pointed out that natural disasters have impacted the educational infrastructure, and even the United Nations secretary-general had visited the province to assess the situation.
He said DEPIx includes the infrastructure damage issue due to floods in the performance evaluation, which is baseless. The PC is unaware that Sindh is the only Pakistani province whose curriculum has been praised by Unesco for being better and more comprehensive than the national curriculum, he added.
He also said Sindh included cultural aspects in its curriculum and took steps to educate children in their mother tongue. Sindh also created a syllabus for children of all religions to learn about their faiths, and is the first province to introduce a transgender education policy, he added.
He stressed that the recruitment of 60,000 teachers in Sindh was done transparently and on merit. In contrast, schools in Punjab lack teachers, and schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are empty, yet no clear statements have been made on these issues, he lamented.
He pointed out that Unicef recently conducted a test of teachers from 50 countries, and out of the eight successful teachers from Pakistan, the top teacher is from Sujawal, Sindh, with two other teachers from the province also making it into the top 10.
The education minister said that after the recruitment of teachers in the province, the quality of education has improved, and the rate of enrolment has increased.
Regarding the technological aspect of the PC’s report, he said Sindh covers 100,000 square kilometres, including desert, mountainous, coastal and hilly areas, where there are network issues.
Providing a network is not the responsibility of the education department, so this issue does not directly apply to them, he added. He reiterated that they have never hidden any legitimate flaws in their system.
He mentioned that after recruiting teachers, Sindh is the first to introduce a teacher licencing policy as part of their professional development, and they are working on improving educational management by introducing an education management cadre.
He highlighted that according to DEPIx, Sindh’s Naushahro Feroze district has outperformed more than half of Punjab’s districts and all of KP’s districts, securing 69th place in terms of performance, so Naushahro Feroze is ahead of 70 per cent of Punjab’s districts in learning outcomes.
Moreover, he stressed, while Sindh has never hidden their shortcomings, federal institutions should consult with them before compiling such reports to avoid misleading statements. Accurate data is key to solving problems in this era of data science, he pointed out.
In response to a question, Shah said the report claims optical marking recognition (OMR) machines have not been provided to Sindh’s boards, but the education department has already handed over the machines.
Malkani added that this year’s papers were checked using the old, manual method. He pointed out that they plan to hold exams in March or April next year and introduce e-marking and OMR sheets in three or four papers.
Replying to a query, he said that the matter of appointing board chairpersons is in court, which Universities & Boards Secretary Abbas Baloch had attended on Wednesday, while a hearing has been set for October 10. He hoped the court cases would be resolved soon.