75 percent attendance in governemt schools
75 percent enrolled children attend govenment schools
Peshawar, Sep 25: Pakistan has about 184,000 primary schools, including about
121,000 government schools, an estimated 25,000 mosque schools and
38,000 private and non-formal community based schools.
According to education sources, approximately 75% of enrolled children
attend government schools. The government intends to introduce core
subjects at the primary, middle and secondary levels of the country's
over 10,000 madrassahs.
Access to free and compulsory education is a fundamental right of
children. In Pakistan education is neither free, nor compulsory, nor
easily accessible to all children.
In the 50 years since its creation, the country has managed to attain a
literacy rate of 45%. In 1947, the first education conference set 1967
as the target date for achieving UPE (Universal Primary Education) for
the entire country, including the rural females.
This promise went unfilled and target dates were pushed forward. Many
experiments were conducted in the education sector in the decades that
followed, but none that led to positive results.
The two most important steps that could have revolutionized the
country's education profile increasing resources and making education
free and compulsory were never taken.
Budgetary allocations for education have remained consistently low.
UNESCO recommends allocating 5% of the GDP to the education sector. In
Pakistan it remains about 2% of the GDP, and even these meager
allocations are not utilized efficiently. Actual spending is mismanaged
and remains far short of the allocations.
The education sector today is afflicted by innumerable problems and
putting it on track requires massive inputs in terms of planning,
monitoring, material and human resources. Getting children enrolled in
schools and making them stay means making schools attractive and
education meaningful.
At present the state of many schools is characterized by shabby
structures (in some cases no structures), little or no water and
sanitation facilities, no learning material, abusive teachers (a major
reason for the high rate of school dropouts), absent teachers, teachers
with little or no training (in a study on the quality of teaching staff
it was found that only 6 out of 10 teachers could pass a fifth grade
math examination).
The level of learning that takes place in such an environment is
reflected in a UNICEF report, The Realities of Girl's Lives in South
Asia, according to which 66% of children who completed primary school
in Pakistan could not read with comprehension and 80 % could not write
a letter.
These realities are evident to even poor and illiterate parents who
find sending children into the workforce a more productive contribution
to their households.
According to the Pakistan Integrated Household Survey (Round 4:
2001-02), 51% of the population ten years and older has ever attended
school. This proportion is much higher in urban areas (69%) than in
women (36%).
The difference between the sexes is particularly large in rural areas.
Punjab (54%) and Sindh (49%) have the highest proportions that have
ever attended school; Balochistan (37%) has the lowest.
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Malakand toppers awarded prizes certificates
Peshawar: To encourage Education in the area, 67 position holder girls
and boys of all schools of Malakand protected area have been given cash
prizes and certificates.
This was stated in a press release issued here on Thursday which added
that DCO Malakand Shafeer ullah Khan distributed prizes and
certificates among the students at a function organized by Malakand
Development Project (MDP) one student from each school, who got first
position, was selected for the prizes.
The DCO distributed Rs. 280,000 among the students. Parents of the
students were also attended the function. Arif Rahim who got first
position throughout the district was given Rs10,000, Shadab Daud
Rs8,000 for second and Zuhra Anwar got Rs6,000 for third position.
Shafirullah Khan District Coordination Officer (DCO) Malakand was the
Chief Guest while Mushtaq Ahmad Executive District Officer Education,
Fazli Ahad Director High Secondary Schools were present on the
occasion. During the ceremony, DCO Malakand, congratulated the students and their
parents for their excellent and outstanding performance in the annual
examination of SSC 2009. He particularly appreciated the girls for
their high achievements (84%) against boys (72%) and added that girls
are naturally hard workers and are not in the habit of losing time. He
announced that next year headmaster of the top position holder at the
district level would be provided an opportunity to be sent for Umrah
while the student getting 1st three position will get high cash prizes.
EDO Education, Mushtaq Ahmad congratulated the student and their
parents. He appreciated the DCO for keen interest to improve education
in the district. He pointed out that the Education Department has
nothing solid to take measures for encouragement of outstanding
students and Teachers, but at the same time appreciated the MDP for
providing such a golden opportunity for excellent students of the
District to take benefit from. F.P Report
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Technical problems disrupt Google's Gmail
Washington: Google's Gmail suffered a disruption on Thursday, the
second time in a month that the Internet giant's email service has gone
down. "We're aware of a problem with Google Mail affecting a small
subset of users," the Internet giant said in a message on its App
Status Dashboard, a site that monitors the performance of its online
services. "The affected users are unable to access Google Mail," Google
said in the message posted at 14:29 GMT. Google provided details on the
site of a workaround, which it said would allow Web users to tap into
their email accounts. The disruption came three weeks after an outage,
which left millions of users without the email service for more than an
hour and a half. Daily times
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