Holidays vs school days in Karachi
Unannounced holidays have become an everyday norm
Karachi, Jan 19: The one thing that school-going children love most about schools are holidays …
and for the children of Karachi, school, in that context, has become an absolute
treat. Unannounced holidays have become an everyday norm for the people
of Karachi. Strikes, protest marches, sudden violence breakouts, or simply
Pakistan winning the last cricket match against India, can prompt holidays for
the city. Where most of these holidays are concerned with the law and
order situation of Karachi, and are thus deemed unavoidable, there are still
some that are either completely unnecessary, or could have been announced
earlier in the notices provided to schools by the Directorate of Private
Institutions. Such steps, if taken, would help school administrations minimize
the chaos and confusion that generally takes place when a holiday is announced
the night before. Nargis Alavi, the principal of Habib Girls School
comments: "When an unscheduled holiday is declared late in the evening, it
causes a lot of confusion. Many children, who may not have seen the news, or are
unsure about it, turn up at school the next day. It causes problems for teachers
as well as parents. And the students are prone to call up the teachers at
inconvenient hours given the utter uncertainty of the whole situation. Also the
school may have scheduled an event on that particular day and rescheduling it
becomes a nightmare. Recently, I had to send a written apology to the director
for keeping the school open when an unscheduled holiday was
declared." Such are the complications that arise for every school when an
unscheduled holiday is announced. School children may find these holidays an
unexpected pleasure, but students studying on a professional basis find such
holidays extremely exasperating. Asra Majeed, an ACCA student,
agrees. "We have only a limited number of days to complete our syllabus,
and holidays of this kind become a burden on us. There have been many a time
when, even after an unscheduled holiday has been announced, our institute
remained open, the teachers arrived, and some students came as well … the rest
of the class suffers as a result. On the other hand, even if all the students
are informed about the holiday, rescheduling another class becomes a problem, as
the teachers may not find the time for it, or the students may have clashes with
other classes." Researching this article brought me to an entirely
surprising piece of evidence. Apparently, unannounced holidays are only a
negligible part of the situation as a whole. Tahir Javed, director of the
Al-Murtaza Professional Development Centre, has researched diligently on this
topic. Mr Javed and the heads of 17 other trust schools including Habib
Girls School, Happy Home School, St Michael's Convent, Gulistan Shah Abdul Latif
Bhittai School for Boys and Mama Parsi School for Girls met with the Minister of
Education of the Interim Government, and presented their problem. Mr Javed had
some very interesting facts to share concerning his research. "One of the
greatest problems of our education system is that we [the education providers]
are not given enough days to even go halfway through the allotted syllabus. The
Ministry of Education provides us with a list of holidays that will occur during
the school year. As an example, for the year 2007, we were informed of 23 days
that would be observed as holidays throughout the country including Eid days,
religious and national holidays and bank holidays. "Apart from these, we
were informed of the days that would be observed as winter and summer vacations.
The rest, termed as school days, are the days that the Ministry of Education has
allotted for the completion of the syllabus, which incidentally should take 210
days to complete after the most recent curriculum update," he points
out. "According to the Ministry of Education, all the days on which the
school remains open are deemed as school days. However, only those days in which
the students are actually in school should be accounted for as school days, as
these are the days in which the children are actually being taught, and the
syllabus is being completed. "The Ministry has counted weekends and
examination periods, including the period in which a school serves as an
examination centre, and the period when teachers evaluate exam papers for the
students' results in these allotted days. All of these days are counted as part
of the teaching days, which is completely irrelevant. How is the school expected
to carry on with its routine work when it is serving as an examination centre?"
he asks. "Also, the ministry has not kept any provision for unannounced
holidays … which is quite unwise keeping the law and order situation of the
country in mind. Moreover, the highest authority figures are given a quota of
holidays that they may announce for the city on ad hoc basis, and these are not
accounted for either. Therefore, after keeping all these days in mind, we are
left with about 100-150 teaching days, as compared to the 210 day schedule
provided by the Ministry of Education," explains the educationist. "Where
we are not given sufficient time to complete even half of the allotted syllabus,
it is a wonder how matriculation and intermediate students can cope with their
examinations. When we look at the education authorities of other places, like
Ontario, Canada, which annually publishes a five-year school calendar and sticks
to it come rain or shine, we can see why our education system is deteriorating
day by day," he adds. Saad Shakeel, a second year intermediate student,
concurs completely with Mr Javed's statements. "When our first-year
intermediate examinations came up, more than half of our syllabus was left
incomplete. This was in no way the fault of our teachers, who conducted classes
regularly, and tried to cover as much work as was possible, in each class. We
simply did not have enough days to complete the approved syllabus. Many students
took extra tuitions to complete the unfinished course, while others, including
myself, had to do so, on our own." The situation seems quite unfair for
the students … and costly for the parents. When parents pay abominably high
prices for their children's education, they expect that their children will at
least learn as much as is required by regular standards in a given year. With
such a vast syllabus, and not enough days available in which to complete it,
children are bound to look for extra tuitions, thus taking another toll on their
parents' pockets. It is a norm for many schools to compensate unannounced
holidays (given due to the law and order situation of the city) by calling
students on weekends, extending the hours of a normal school day, or cutting
short a part of the vacations. However, this presents another
problem. "We remained open most of the winter vacation this year in order
to compensate for the days lost due to the unusually high number of unannounced
holidays since the term started," says Mr Javed. "It is important that
our students complete their allotted syllabus. However, we have received at
least a couple of calls from the Directorate of Education asking why we have
kept the school open when they scheduled holidays for this period. It is a sad
fact, that in this country, we are asked to apologise for imparting education to
students, and any school may announce day/s off for any number of reasons
ranging from good performance of the school in an inter-school sports event to
the school getting flooded in the rain, and not be asked to give
explanations." It is true that schools that call students on scheduled
holidays are given warnings and may have to give fines for further breaches. It
comes as a surprise that our Ministry of Education is more concerned about the
holidays as compared to the teaching days. A serious reality check is in order
here -- the ministry needs to make up a school year calendar for the schools to
follow, and that facilitates the completion of the allotted
curriculum. It is evident that our schedule is based more on ad-hoc
notions than hard facts and relevant research. The ministry either has to cut
down the syllabus to fit in the teaching days provided, or cut down the holidays
to accommodate the vast syllabus. It doesn't take a genius to figure out which
measure will be popular with school-going children. By Tahreem Wasti (Dawn)
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BSEK invites applications for scholarships
Karachi: The Board of Secondary Education Karachi (BSEK) has invited applications from deserving students of
recognised government secondary schools of Karachi for poverty-cum-merit
scholarship 2008-2009. The application forms can be collected from Syed Umair
Hussain, Assistant Secretary, Research Section, BSEK during office hours on
working days and same may be submitted duly filled in and verified by concerned
head of the institution along with relevant documents latest by February 21,
2009. The News
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FPCCI to establish university
Karachi: The Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and
Industry (FPCCI) has announced that it is in the process of establishing what it
called a "world-class university" in the country. No university in any
Muslim country was included in the top 100 universities of the world, while only
two Turkish universities were ranked at 463 and 487 positions in a list of the
world's 500 best universities, the president of the federation, Tanvir Ahmad
Sheikh, said in a statement issued on Saturday. He said that FPCCI was
optimistic about establishing a world-class university to meet the country's
requirements. The university would impart high-tech education and its curriculum
would focus on economics and management sciences, he said. Ppi
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