Aysha Khalid was very happy as she had succeeded in gathering 27 girls and women to open a literacy centre in her village, situated in the suburbs of Haroonabad city, a tehsil in district Bahawalnagar.
According to the requirement of the Literacy & Non-Formal Basic Education Department, Punjab, there should be at least 20 adults for opening a new literacy centre in any district of the Punjab. And those convinced by Aysha were more than the number required by the L&NFBED.
She got registered her centre with the Punjab literacy department after starting classes in the bethak of her parents house. The eldest among her five siblings, Aysha had passed the intermediate. She had to abandon her education after passing her higher secondary school certificate examination due to the death of her father in a road accident, two years ago. Her father was a welder by profession, and he had allowed her to continue her education even to the university level. However, his untimely death changed the situation.
About one-and-a-half years ago, her Higher Secondary School teacher, who lives in her colony and is aware of her family’s financial crisis, told her about the adult literacy programme of the Punjab government. She visited various homes in her colony, along with her mother, to convince the uneducated girls and women to learn reading and writing from her “free of cost” at her house.
She received a good response from the area women, as her family commanded great respect among them. With the help of her teacher, she sent an application to the literacy department, and after two inspections by the authorities concerned, her centre was registered as a non-formal education centre. She was appointed as a tutor, and she started receiving Rs. 5,000 per month remuneration after about three months.
She was very happy to earn something monthly while sitting in her house, and so were her students who were enjoying the process of learning reading and writing. But only after six or seven months of opening of her centre, her remuneration was stopped. She called the department officials many a time, not only in her district Bahawalnagar, but also the head office in Lahore for release of her “salary”.
In the beginning, she was told to be patient and wait for some time, as there were some administrative problems in the head office. After three months, she was told that the system was being reorganised and it would take some more time. There were no more monthly inspections at all. She was told that if she would continue her centre, all her dues would be paid. But, she started losing interest for being unpaid for months. And after about eight months, the centre was closed.
Aysha Khalid’s centre is not the only one closed for non cooperation and lack of support of the provincial government’s literacy department. According to a report published in The News International recently, at least 40% of the on-paper 6,667 centres for adult literacy of the Punjab Literacy Movement failed to achieve targets.
According to the report, the first cycle of the Punjab Literacy Movement Project (of six months duration) was launched at the end of 2014, with the objective to achieve a target of maximum adult literacy in areas where the literacy rate is not satisfactory. The scope of the project, worth Rs. 1,821.652 million, was to run 6,667 functional literacy centres (FLCs) in 36 tehsils of the Punjab province in 40 months, in six cycles.
An official working for L&NFBED told Cutting Edge that almost 40% of the FLCs could not be made functional in the first cycle that ended in May 2015. A progress report on the first cycle was yet to be compiled, added the official, who does not wish to be named.
According to official documents, the objectives of the project were: raising the literacy rate in 36 model tehsils by 7-20% and giving basic literacy and basic life skills to 1,000,000 adult illiterates of age group 16 plus (male and female). The plan was also to replicate the model in the remaining tehsils of each district in Punjab after piloting for the achievement of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The official said that many centres could not take off because of less numerical strength than required, which should be not less than 25 students at a time. The place for the centre, utilities and mobilisation was the responsibility of the teacher of the centre, who was offered Rs. 5,000 per month, he added. In most of the cases, 95% of students and teachers were women.
This is not for the first time that an educational and literacy initiative has met such a fate. Almost all such initiatives, started with fanfare and enthusiasm, lost steam in a few months in the past. One such initiative launched by the federal government across country last month, also seems to be going nowhere. The National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) had announced establishment of 540,000 literacy centres in 59 focused districts of the country in 2015, where the literacy rate is less than 60%. According to officials concerned, the project could not be launched properly despite passage of about one year.
However, Razina Alam Khan, chairperson of the NCHD, defends the projects of her department with full might. In a talk with Cutting Edge at a function in the federal capital, she said that the NCHD had established 15,000 feeder schools on an average, every year from year 2009 to 2013, to provide schooling for the un-served population. It also trained 130,000 teachers during that period, she claims.
About the achievements of the NCHD, the chairperson says that 164,190 adult literacy centres were set up in 134 districts of Pakistan, after the NCHD establishment and more than 3.84 million adults were made literate, out of whom 95% were females. She says that the adult literacy rate is highest in the Punjab, with 50%, and lowest in Balochistan with 18%.
Razina Alam says that under the adult literacy programme, the NCHD has planned to bring about a paradigm shift in its literacy programme and wants to develop a literacy programme from basic literacy to functional literacy. She pledges to make the literacy programme more meaningful and relevant by linking it with skill development and income generation activities.
She says that the NCHD will prepare material for expanding non-formal education and for skills improvement among unemployed youth. The chairperson says that with nationwide network of 101 Human Development Support Units (district offices) situated all over Pakistan and hands-on-experience, the NCHD would enlarge the scale and scope of the efforts made by the government in ensuring effective provision of social services, along with enhancing literacy rate.
She says that 141 literary centres have also been established by the NCHD in far-off regions of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, at a cost of Rs. 1.75 million, while Rs. 4.68 million have been allocated for the phase II programme, being undertaken in the coming months. She reveals that literacy centres are also being established in madrassas.
The chairperson believes that the NCHD projects would add a 10% literacy rate in the overall literacy level of the country and help achieve an 85% literacy rate by 2023. The key initiatives, adds the official, include provision of second chance learning for the 10-to-16 year age group through accelerated learning approaches, and adult literacy courses for 16-plus age groups. Other plans are enrolment of 419,000 students of 10-16 age group in 35,000 new L&NFBED and community feeder schools, improving literacy rate to 75% by year 2018, from the existing 60% through the national youth literacy movement.
However, it is not clear how the new initiatives could prove to be a success when almost all past such efforts failed to bear fruit in the form of enhanced literacy rates.
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