Reposted from Express Tribune | February 10, 2013 | For many children of Balochistan, attending school is not an option

Express Tribune Correspondent

QUETTA: A damning report on the state of education in Balochistan, Pakistan's 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.

These and other shocking statistics were revealed at the provincial launch of Pakistan's largest-ever citizen-led household-based Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Survey 2012 in Quetta.

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. "Almost 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," the ASER report said.

ASER's 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.

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%.

However, the number of children falls dramatically as the progress is made to higher classes. "The 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."

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.

The lack of emphasis on learning English as a language has been well documented in the country over the years.

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 - raising serious questions about their learning abilities.

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.

"As 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," the ASER report noted.

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.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 10th, 2013.

For full story and links, see Express Tribune: For many children of Balochistan, attending school is not an option