A school for every child

 A school for every child 

Uzbekistan has 6.84 million children between the ages of 6 and 17.  Every child is enrolled and there are no out-of-school children.  Uzbekistan Law mandates parents to ensure that their children regularly attend schools from class 1 to 11.    Failure to do so can lead to fines up to 5,100,000 So’ms or arrest for up to 15 days.  All schools use ‘E-Dars’, a Digital Attendance Recording App, which records attendance for teachers and students. Chess is a compulsory subject in primary schools and taught by qualified teachers.  Creditably, the Zindagi Trust in Pakistan has also adopted the Chess tradition in its schools. But that is where all comparison ends.

Pakistan has about 65 million children between the ages of 5 and 16.  Of these, an estimated 26 to 28 million children (approximately 40%) do not have access to schools.  Around 77 per cent of the school-going children suffer from ‘learning poverty’- not having the knowledge, understanding and skills corresponding to their age or grade.  The daily arrival of 18,917 newborns makes this an increasingly insurmountable task.  Slowing down this unstoppable ‘out-of-school’ Tsunami calls for several specific, sustained and non-traditional responses.

Begin by making a national commitment (currently missing) on two fundamental issues – to control our runaway population and to provide schooling to every child in Pakistan.  While there have been excellent reports by the Annual Status of Education Report (Aser) and the Education Management Information Systems (Emis), we need far more accurate and specific data for every child of Pakistan. This ought to include name, age, CRC, years of schooling (if ever enrolled), current status (student, employed, idle), class, school, and name and address of parents of every child in every Union Council (UC) of Pakistan. Unless we have accurate data, our entire discussion would remain hypothetical and unrealistic.  Employ 100,000 or so men and women, to collect this data in 2-3 months.

Make ‘educating every child’ a national movement, delinked from all party politics, personal publicity and political bribes (free laptops, ration bags or electrical scooters).  Order all schools to use a standard (student and teacher) tracking and monitoring App, such as Railer, TeacherKit, EduPage or MyClass Attendance. Reduce the number of school hours to 3 and operate 3 shifts in every school. Reduce the number of subjects and use a preloaded tablet connected to a TV screen in each class for teaching maths, science and English.

Use Open-source educational platforms that give offline access like Khan Academy, Kolibri, and PhET Interactive Simulations, allowing students to learn through videos, quizzes, and experiments. Given Pakistan’s shortage of trained teachers, AI-powered solutions like Khanmigo offer a scalable and cost-effective means to rapidly enhance teaching quality. The recent collaboration between The Citizens Foundation (TCF) and the Khan Academy for integrating Khanmigo teaching assistant, to support educators, is a praiseworthy initiative. Khanmigo’s bilingual support could allow teachers to instruct in both English and Urdu.

Pakistan could increase and modify a large part of BISP funds to create education-related incentives. These could be rewards for parents who limit the children to two and whose children show regular attendance in school, with girls receiving twice the incentive amount. The nature of other incentives could be cycles for girls where the school is at a distance, free uniform and books, free, wholesome and healthy meals at school, laptops for children who showed +95 % attendance till class 10, free bus system to transport children to schools and national awards and appreciations for parents whose children show regularity and excellence in schools.

Can we not extricate ourselves from the compulsion of needless pampering of our bureaucrats and politicians and instead increase the education budget by 50%?  Building more schools and improving the existing structures can be done without foreign assistance.  Incentivise corporates to build schools as a part of their CSR.  Promoting compulsory education and family planning ought to be made essential aspects of Friday sermons.  Legislate laws that mandate parents to ensure that their children regularly attend schools from class 1 to 10.  Digitise the entire schooling data and make it accessible on a national website, for real-time monitoring.  The Chairman of each UC and the Assistant Commissioner ought to be personally held accountable to ensure that every child in their jurisdiction is indeed a school-going child.

Naeem Sadiq

Dawn,  17 April 2025