Moalims

Karachi

Around 2,500 government schools were closed in the province because there weren’t enough teachers, said secretary education Dr Fazlullah Pechuho on Monday, while requesting the Sindh government to lift the ban on recruitment.

He was addressing a meeting at the CM House of a 66-million-dollar World Bank-assisted project “Sindh Global Partnership for Education”.

“When this government had assumed office, around 8,000 schools had been closed,” said secretary Pechuho. “But with constant efforts of government and the education department the number of closed schools has been brought down to 2,500.”

However, Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah pointed out that most government schools were overstaffed, suggesting that postings of teaching staff be rationalised in a way to make the closed schools functional, directing education minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro to personally supervise the process.

Earlier in the meeting, the chief minister asked officials concerned why reports were circulating that around 3,000 schools were still closed in the province. The education minister responded that 1,100 of these schools were “non-viable” — meaning that there were no grounds to let them function because there were similar facilities nearby. "During the tenure of former president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf the town nazims had constructed unnecessary schools to boost their popularity. There are cases of there being five schools in a village of 200 people,” he said.

The chief minister then asked to be provided a list of the 1,100 non-viable schools so the buildings could be used in public interest. "The list may also provide necessary recommendations," he said.

The chief minister also stressed on the occasion that recruitment in education department must be made on merit.

Talking about the World Bank program, secretary Fazllullah Pechuho said out of the total cost of $66 million, the World Bank had released $22 million.

He said the objective of the program was to establish a monitoring structure for improving the performance and transparency of government school systems.

He told the chief minister that one of the components of the project was to establish Sindh School Monitoring System, designed to put in place to collect, analyse and disseminate data on key school level indicators, including student enrolment and teachers’ presence.

The secretary said for the monitoring system, data would be collected on a monthly basis by independent monitors. By June 30, 2016 four monthly reports would be generated.

Education minister added that 225 “monitoring assistants” or “supervisors” had been selected through tests conducted by IBA Sukkur and they will be assisted by 29 junior clerks, 11 data processing operators and other support staff.

News Reference