LAHORE: The built-in inequality in classrooms is stopping children from learning well. This dilemma has put India in a “big stuck” and the situation in Pakistan is no different when looked through the lens of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER).
This was stated by ASER Centre, India, director Dr Rukmani Banerji during her presentation on “Every child in school and … learning well? Evidence and experience from India” at the opening session of a two-day international conference on “Quality – Inequality Quandary – Transacting Learning Relevance & Teacher Education in South Asia” organised by the South Asia Forum for Education Development (SAFED) and Idara-i-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA) in collaboration with the Education Testing Service (ETS), Princeton; UK aid and Foundation Open Society Institute at a hotel here on Wednesday.
Dr Banerji said survey reports in rural India showed that classes’ composition was complex in terms of students’ age, language and learning levels, resulting in huge implications for instruction and equity. Quoting ASER survey results, she said students of different learning levels and capacities were sitting in a classroom and teachers were teaching all of them on a par. Resultantly, students’ learning levels were found far less than the desired levels. At least, she said, fifth standard students must be fluent in reading Grade-II text and solve similar level arithmetic questions. She regretted that textbook level for a specific grade was too difficult for most children and classrooms were not friendly at all.
Still, Dr Banerji said, “big change can happen if governments make strategic moves based on evidence and reality”. In India, she said, close to 200 million children (97 per cent) aged 6-14 were enrolled in schools. There was a need for India as well as Pakistan to move from ensuring schooling to guaranteeing learning for all children.
ANP vice-president Bushra Gohar said children should be more important to any government and stressed the need to invest more in education from country’s own resources instead of looking toward the World Bank and other donor agencies. She said only “political will” could help bring about a change in the depressing education scene in the country.
Calling for strict accountability process, Ms Gohar stressed the need for improving village schools as well as strengthening public-private partnership. She said there was a lot of political pressure for posting and transfers of teachers and “teachers have been lost somewhere in the system”.
Punjab Planning and Development Department Secretary Tahir Ali said the Punjab government was spending one-third of its budget on education, but not getting the value for money.
He said available resources needed to be used efficiently and more focus should be on service delivery.
Stating that equity in education was as big challenge as Education for All, Mr Ali stressed the need for providing equal opportunities and level playing field to children of all segments of the society to expect impact. At present, he said, there was a two-fold discrimination in terms of educational opportunities for all — public and private schooling as well as rural and urban divide.
He said there was a need to continuously invest in education to transform 59 per cent of country’s youth into quality human resource. With the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, he said, it was now responsibility of the state to provide education to all and this would not be possible without private sector’s support.
ITA Programmes Director Baela Raza Jamil said it was quite a journey since 2000 to address sub-optimal functioning of public schools through a sector-wide approach to bring quality education to Pakistani children. She said this regional seminar would hopefully serve as a platform for several policy dialogues on key themes.
Speaking through a video link, ETS senior vice-president Dr Michael said ETS would take ideas from this seminar to educate children at their early age.
