Rs5bn needed to clear just one-fourth backlog of missing facilities

Karachi
The Sindh government requires a minimum amount of Rs5 billion to be able to clear the one-fourth backlog of missing faculties in more than 50 percent schools of the province.
Moreover, in the next fiscal year, the government should increase its education budget by at least 30 percent, inclusive of inflation, to help begin meeting education-related challenges.
These recommendations were put forward in a pre-budget policy dialogue held by a think-tank, Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (I-SAPS), in collaboration with Alif Ailaan, on Tuesday.
The dialogue was attended by members of the academia, government officials, civil society representatives and researchers.
Lead researcher Ahmad Ali while outlining about 10 research-based recommendations for deciding allocations in the education budget for the next fiscal year, 2015-2016, stressed effective and transparent utilisation of available resources.
He said the education budget for the ongoing financial year had been increased considerably, but 90 percent of the funds had been routed towards the salary component. On the other hand, said Ali, the development funds had actually been less than the last fiscal year 2014-2015.
He pointed out the need for effective monitoring, not only of the status of government education facilities, but also private schools in the province.
“Private schools are a large part of the complete equation of education,” said Ali, “It is only sensible to also include them in the government’s monitoring system.”
For this, he recommended doubling the current budget of Sindh Education Monitoring and Information System (SEMIS) to Rs1 billion to help it map the status of private schools and also conduct effective monitoring.
Along with the big challenge of getting children enrolled in schools, another parallel challenge was making them stay there.
To mitigate this problem, he called for upgrading the existing primary schools to include middle education, while simultaneously building more secondary schools.
He advised allocating 40 percent of the total education budget for secondary education to help the children enrolled in schools continue their studies.

Education management
To help improve planning and management of resources and funds, the researcher suggested to the Sindh government to empower the schools’ management committees (SMCs) by giving them more funds and authority to make related decision.
“As an experiment, a pilot project could be launched in eight selected districts,” he said, “The committee members will need to be trained in recruitment, resource management and procurement, besides professional development. They need to be empowered to change the scenario effectively and that can only be done by granting them a bit more authority.”
He appreciated the initiative of the Reform Support Unit to establish District Education Groups (DEGs) and called for their continuity. He said development funds needed to be allocated for their functioning and institutionalisation.

Free education
Discussing the subject of free education, Ali said even with the provision of books and stipends to girl students, a large number of them still dropped out in the ninth or tenth grades because they couldn’t afford the fees for board exams.
“The government can start with the girls who are already getting stipends between Rs2,500 and Rs3,000. If it decides to waive off their exam fee, it wouldn’t be much of a burden on its exchequer,” he remarked.
However, eminent scholar Dr Khalida Ghaus, disagreed, saying that this incentive should first be extended to the boys, who bear much of the financial burdens of their families.
In her opinion, the government had blindfolded considerations of meeting the millennium development goals pertaining to enrolment of children in schools. “Unfortunately, middle and secondary education has been the subject of intentional and brutal neglect by the government,” she said.
“But ignoring this aspect of education, the minds of children are being paralysed because it narrows down their avenues for progress.”
She said besides getting children into schools, equal attention was demanded for revising curriculum and increasing the teachers’ capacity, something which received the half-hearted dedication of authorities at present. “It is very important to increase the technology skills of teachers,” she stressed.