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A damning report on the state of education in Balochistan, Pakistan\u2019s most deprived province, has revealed that 34.1% of children aged between six and 16 are not enrolled in schools.
Around 77.7% children in the pre-primary school age group are not attending elementary schools in the province.<\/p>\n
These and other shocking statistics were revealed at the provincial launch of Pakistan\u2019s largest-ever citizen-led household-based Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Survey 2012 in Quetta.<\/p>\n
The survey also identified that children of school-going age across the country have an alarmingly poor learning ability in terms of reading Urdu, regional languages, English or doing basic levels of arithmetic. \u201cAlmost 92.2% of Class-III students are not able to read Class-II level story in Urdu or regional languages like Sindhi and Pashto, while almost 78% of students cannot read Class-II level sentences,\u201d the ASER report said.<\/p>\n
ASER\u2019s specifically trained volunteer team surveyed 16,303 households in 825 villages located in 28 rural districts of Balochistan and detailed information of 56,375 children (59% male and 41% female) aged between three and 16 years was collected.<\/p>\n
The report stated that 34.1% of children falling in the six to 16 age brackets were not attending schools in Balochistan. Girls account for 21% of this figure and boys account for 13%.<\/p>\n
However, the number of children falls dramatically as the progress is made to higher classes. \u201cThe number of children comes down drastically as they progress to higher classes. For every 8 children in Class-1, only 3 children reach up to Class-X.\u201d
The learning skills of children aged between five and 16 were assessed through specifically designed language and mathematics tests, which covered languages up to Grade-II level text and arithmetic covering up to Grade-III level textbooks. The depressing results showed that nearly 84.5% of children in Grade-III could not read even a sentence in Urdu or their own language.<\/p>\n
The lack of emphasis on learning English as a language has been well documented in the country over the years.<\/p>\n
English reading and comprehension tests reported that 68.1% of Class-V students, 49.5% Class-VI and 40.9% Class-VII students could not read Class-II level English sentences \u2013 raising serious questions about their learning abilities.<\/p>\n
All was not doom and gloom in the ASER survey. It reported that 34% of boys and 19% of girls were able to read at least Urdu, Sindhi and Pashto sentences. Similarly, 35% of males and 20% of females were able to correctly read words and sentences in English, while 38% of the former and 18% of the latter were able to do basic subtraction and division arithmetic problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs many as 58.3% of surveyed private high schools and 9.6% government schools had functional computer labs. While 41.6% private high schools and 12.9% government high schools had library books available for students to use in the schools premises,\u201d the ASER report noted.<\/p>\n
Up to 56% of the private primary schools and 14% government schools surveyed did not have adequate and useable water facilities. Similarly, 78% public and 19% private primary schools do not have functional toilet facilities.<\/p>\n
Source: The Express Tribune<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A damning report on the state of education in Balochistan, Pakistan\u2019s most deprived province, has revealed that 34.1% of children aged between six and 16 are not enrolled in schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c54-reports"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n