(MENAFN- Tribal News Network) ISLAMABAD: The fifth annual District Education Rankings was launched in Islamabad on Thursday by the Alif Ailaan campaign. The rankings use official government data from across the country, along with data from the ASER survey, to assess the performance of districts in education.
The 2017 rankings show that while certain parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab have made marked improvements in school infrastructure, the pace of progress in Sindh, Balochistan and FATA remains a concern. Similarly, Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and ICT all show some progress across all indicators.
Despite strong and continued commitments across all political parties, improvements in education have largely been limited to infrastructure upgrades in primary schools. Middle, high, and higher secondary schools, however, are not being given their due attention.
For every four primary schools in Pakistan, there is only one school above primary level. This means, that most children that pass Class 5 do not have schools to continue their education. The large out of school population of the country is a direct product of this failure.
The rankings also show that the gender gap in education is persistent and deeply enmeshed with the school infrastructure challenge especially for middle, high and higher secondary schools.
As a result, the falloff in female enrolment beyond the primary level is steep and stark. There are more than 55 districts in Pakistan where the total number girls are enrolled in high schools is less than one thousand.
The district rankings also demonstrate illuminate the deep intra provincial inequalities, and the disparities between districts within a province, reflecting a failure of programming at the provincial level.
Though provinces should not be held responsible for disparities between each other, they are very much responsible for the wide disparities between their own districts. Provinces need to attend to the different levels of performance in education across their districts.
These district education rankings highlight some improvements but many disparities. One of the most urgent things issues is the need for improved data regimes in the country. Authorities continue to prioritise school infrastructure at the expense of what happens in classrooms.
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