PUBLISHED
March 03, 2024
KARACHI:
Mirroring the lackadaisical stance of its predecessor even though it was an elected government, the interim government in Sindh also seems to be treating education with a nonchalant attitude. According to reports, despite the sharp increase in the price of paper in Shehbaz Sharif’s government which continued in the tenure of caretaker provincial government, for the new academic session 2024, a twice-as-large tender for printing textbooks [that are distributed free of cost in government schools], was issued without increasing in the allocated budget.
This is not rocket science and it does not require Einstein’s IQ for Sindh’s education department to understand that with the throttled economy and drastic devaluation of rupee, the allocated budget would not be sufficient to print the require number of textbooks. But it boils down to priorities!
Who suffers?
Consequently, the students in Sindh’s government schools will not have access to the required number of textbooks for the upcoming academic year 24-25 starting August 1, after a delay of three months. The students will attend classes without textbooks. This is the dire situation for students in the upcoming session as well as those in the current session.
A tradition, nonetheless
Unbelievably enough, the unavailability and lack of timely availability of books at the beginning of the session in Sindh is nothing new, and has been going on continuously for the past several years. This continuous crisis peaked in the current academic session 23-24 when students in government schools of Sindh confronted a shortage of two million textbooks for the first four months of the session.
Anymore negligence by the present caretaker administration or the next elected government, would mark it as a well-observed tradition for the Sindh education department.
Apparently, the Sindh Textbook Board repeatedly cancelled the tender for the printing textbooks, while the budget amount, which is said to be less than three billion rupees, remained unchanged.
The dollar’s flight and the students’ plight
Before the dollar soared in Pakistan, 30 million textbooks were printed for free distribution to the students of government schools in Sindh. However, when the dollar equated Rs 300, the cost of printing paper, which was previously Rs 160, increased by 60% to Rs 260. The cost of binding glue and card sheets (bleach board), used for book covers, also increased as all these are also essential imports required in the preparation of textbooks.
However, despite the rising cost of paper and other components, the education department of the Sindh Government did not feel the need to increase the budget allocation for printing textbooks, whereas in the most recent tender issued, the number of books has come down to the minimum requirement.
As a result, in line with Sindh’s education board’s tradition, just like the previous year, this year too, the required number of books will not be printed nor supplied to the schools on time.
Going to pandemic schedule
When the half-asleep education department woke up after deep slumber, and smelt the coffee, it dawned on them that the new academic year/session which was previously due to start from April 15, 2024, won’t work without textbooks. They conveniently [and probably without any guilt or compunction] decided to move it up by four months to August 1.
With the realisation, that they could no longer print textbooks and give them to the students on time, all efforts to bring the academic session back to pre-Covid schedule went to the dogs, due to their consistent and extreme ineptitude and failure. Prior to the pandemic, the academic session in Sindh started from the first of April. Now, five years later, attempts were being made to resume this session on schedule, but it is not going to happen.
A waste of time
This departmental issue affects millions of students as every teacher, each student and their parents suffer wastage of time, zero learning and poor results at each school level. With March in mind for finals and a new session beginning in April, in most missionary and private schools, the last session was near conclusion, the syllabi, tests and assignments near completion. Now students who would have gone to their new classes and begun new courses in April will be dragged to school for a longer current session, with the teachers prolonging the same course to kill time.
“Tell me a school that has funds and skills to begin something out of the box for this extra term,” says Sadia Akhtar, a frustrated parent whose sons go to a missionary school. “We will continue to pay school fees, and spend money on conveyance and on all that is entailed in sending a child to school just for formality, especially in these dear times.”
What the education secretary says
However, Shireen Narejo, secretary school education is not ready to fully accept the situation or delay and prefers to call it merely an “impression.”
“It is a wrong impression that the academic session has been postponed only because of the delay in the printing of books,” she told The Express Tribune. “There are other significant issues, such as the schools were closed in order to accommodate teachers on electoral training and duty during general elections, which prevented the exams from being conducted on time.”
Claiming that the education department will not allow a shortage of books in any case and all efforts will be made to print the required number of books, Narejo adds, “The chief minister of Sindh has also addressed the book deficit during the current session by issuing a supplementary grant.”
Not being able to recall the exact amount of money allotted for the printing of textbooks, offhand, the secretary blamed the publishers for being a hindrance in printing of books and issuance of tenders. “It is a mafia that wants the chairman and secretary of the Sindh Textbook Board to be appointed as per their will.”
The bureaucratic circus
According to information from the Sindh Textbook Board and the education department, the latest tender issued by the board exceeds the budget by twice the amount for the required number of books.
Sources also said that Agha Sohail Pathan, the former chairman of the Sindh Textbook Board, had changed both the size and grammage of paper to reduce the budget so that the books could be printed within the available budget. However, the current caretaker chief minister of Sindh removed former chairman Pathan and the secretary of the Sindh Textbook Board, and replaced them with Akhtar Bugti as the chairman, and appointed former officer Hafeezullah Meher as the secretary. The former officer was removed on allegations of irregularities.
According to sources, the new administration of the textbook board issued a new tender where the size of the book was changed from 20/30 to 22/32, and paper grammage/weight increased from 63 to 68 grams. Although this might have improved the pitiful quality of government-school textbooks, which promise myopia more than knowledge, the cost of producing books went up, without an increase in budget.
This led to the issuance of another new tender with book size modified back to 20/30, with same grammage. At least the paper quality might have become a [bit stronger than toilet roll] bit improved. But according to sources, not more than 20 million books got printed in this budget.
Efforts to contact Hafeezullah Mehar and Akhtar Bugti regarding the urgent situation remain unsuccessful despite multiple attempts made through phone calls and messages.
The anti-corruption department, Jamshoro zone A, has filed a formal complaint to secretary education Sindh, against the current secretary of Sindh Textbook Board. It claims that following the board’s surprise visit in response to allegations of billions of rupees’ worth of corruption, the secretary was contacted thrice in a row on January 3, 8, and 15 to seek records and comments. Nevertheless, he has not responded to the anti-corruption department. Therefore, the chairman of the board is required to provide comment to anti-corruption in connection with the inquiry according to a letter issued on January 19.
Meanwhile, another letter has been issued by the chief minister’s inspection team on January 17, to apprise the secretary of the Sindh Textbook Board that even with the release of the allotted amount, the required number of textbooks could not be supplied.
Strangely enough the Sindh government itself is conducting an inquiry for Hafeezullah who has been appointed secretary, after previously having issued an unrevised tender after the drastic devaluation of rupee and prices shooting up.
Enter fact-finding committee
Shockingly, an official report from the fact-finding committee, led by Professor Dr Sarosh Hashmat Lodhi, the Vice-Chancellor of NED University and appointed by the caretaker Chief Minister of Sindh, attributes the failure of 64–66% of students failing intermediate and first-year exams in Karachi due to the tragic unavailability of books.
The committee formed in response to student protests against the results, states that the availability of the textbooks has resulted in significant difficulties and consequences for both teachers and students. The new editions of textbooks were in English language while 30% of the enrollment was for Urdu medium learning. Five textbooks each for pre-engineering and pre-medical, were to be printed and supplied to the market but according to students, they could not study for examination because of the non-availability of textbooks. However, in August last 2022, the Sindh Textbook Board had issued a notification that mathematics, chemistry, English and biology textbooks.
“My class fellows and I wanted to buy books for half the session, but they were not available in the market because they had not been published yet,” says Syeda Batool, an intermediate student. “As the curriculum had changed, we could not obtain these books even from old students. We could not study some subjects for many months in college, and our results suffered.”
Teachers to the rescue
“The books were not delivered to the required number of schools in the current session,” clarifies Tariq Ali, the Deputy District Officer, Central District. “Later, due to the intervention of the caretaker chief minister, when the books were received, the session was already halfway and this was a cause of concern for the parents and teachers. For instance, with 50 students enrolled in the school, only 20 sets of books were provided. The parents of students who had not received textbooks approached the headmistress demanding why their children had not received textbooks. Fortunately, in some schools, teachers came up with the temporary solution to not hand over textbooks to the students, but share them in classrooms and then return to the teachers after class.
Systemic slumber
Sources said that the previous government did not pay attention to the fact that the appreciation of the dollar against the rupee has made the paper expensive, and the amount allocated for printing textbooks had become insufficient. The fact that these books would not be available in the market for government schools and private schools/colleges for free distribution in the required number was also overlooked.
More meandering
The publishers had made a plea in the court that the budget allocation and volume of books remains the same and has not been increased. They notified that if the volume of the books reduced later to adjust with budget allocation, not only will the supply of books be short, it will also negatively impact the publishers. The court has responded on February 21, asking the board to mention allocation and number of books clearly.
As a result, on February 22, tenders mentioning the same budget allocation of Rs 2.5 billion have been invited, and the volume of books has not been mentioned. Also, the government has replaced the chairman of the board with a new one.
Bottomline
Amidst the dire consequences of another textbook unavailability and shortage on students’ academic success, this year too, the glaring question persists: who within the education department is prepared to step forward and be held accountable? As the educational landscape struggles with challenges, the call for responsible leadership becomes more urgent than ever. Only through accountability and proactive measures can we hope to secure a brighter future for the countless students affected by these systemic issues.
Source link: https://tribune.com.pk/story/2458240/failing-through-the-pages