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The school with 12 students in 3 classes
KARACHI, Sep 10: The teachers of the four-decade old historical Mahnaz Government Boys
Lower Secondary School in Keamari Town are paid Rs 73,253 by the Sindh Education
department for teaching its 12 students in three classes, it was learned on 'World Literacy Day' Saturday.
"We have five teachers and 12
students in three classes," teacher Amjad Arshad, also acting headmaster, said. "The Sindh Education department would know why we don't have any
students but for our part, as teachers, we do our work."
According to
information collected from the Accountant General's office, there are seven
staffers at the Mahnaz School, 5 teachers and two lower staffers.
Mahnaz
school is located at Jackson bazaar near Pir Gaib Shah Shrine and was
nationalized in 1977. Over the last few years all of a sudden, the school lost
its student body. "There is a lack of the interest by the school management,"
said a retired headmaster on the condition of anonymity.
Even 60 years
after independence, Pakistan is still at the bottom of the education index among
10 countries. Over 68.4 million people in the country are illiterate and the
profile depicts a substantial gender specific and rural-urban disparity. The
rate for both men and women increased at a very slow pace during last decades,
according to experts.
World Literacy Day was marked by several NGOs and
educational organizations who arranged discussions and rallies in different
parts of the city. For example, the Batik School Network, a project of the
Society for Education Welfare (SEW), held a walk starting from the Sindh
Assembly and ending at the Karachi Press Club.
Another seminar on
'Education of All' was held in Lyari by the Students Educational Welfare
Association (SEWA).
On the occasion, SEWA chairman Muhammad Ismail said
that the state of a literate society is still an unaccomplished goal and an
ever-moving target. "To meet the goal, Pakistan needs not only more effective
efforts but also requires renewed political will," he said.
According to
the Ministry of Education, Islamabad, district ranking in Sindh of literacy
rates, in the age 15-plus group, Karachi's rate is 63 percent of 2.09 million
people. This is followed by Sukkur at 44 percent of 281,933 people, and the
lowest is Tharparkar at 17 percent literacy out of 374,684
people.
According to an old study by Shahrukh Rafi Khan, public sector
salaries, including those that apply to rural teachers in Pakistan, are rigidly
determined by educational qualifications and experience. If it can be determined
that educational qualifications and experience enhance teacher cognitive skills,
which in turn enhance student cognitive skills, one can infer that there is some
rationality to such a salary structure and that teacher incentives are
compatible with teacher effectiveness. He used two data sets to test these
propositions. The first, based only on a survey of government schools, seemed to
suggest that some rationality, with many qualifications, existed in rural public
sector schooling salary scales. However, a more recent data set that is
disaggregated by school type (government, non-government and private sectors)
showed no such rationality existed in the public sector, while salaries were
responsive to qualifications in the non-government and private sectors. Daily times
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