33% Balochistan children out of school: Report
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QUETTA: About 33 percent of Balochistan’s children aged 6-16 still remain out of school and student competencies in learning English, Arithmetic and Languages are deplorable.

QUETTA: About 33 percent of Balochistan’s children aged 6-16 still remain out of school and student competencies in learning English, Arithmetic and Languages are deplorable.

This was said in a survey report on status of education in Balochistan during year 2014 which was compiled by non-governmental organization “Annual Status of Education Reporter (ASER) Pakistan” in a report launching seminar, here Thursday.

Director Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi, Baela Raza Jameel said that the ASER survey has been based on the information of 60,535 children of age 3 to 16 years including 39 percent girls by volunteer citizens who personally visited 18,536 households in 947 villages during year 2014.

She said that according to the survey report, student competencies in learning English, Arithmetic and Language are deplorable including 67 of the children from Class-V cannot read Class-II level text in Urdu.

“In English, only 28 percent of the surveyed Class-V students could read sentences which should ideally be read by students from the second grade and a similar trend has been observed in Arithmetic capabilities of children where only 24 percent of Class-V children were able to do a two-digit division respectively,” she quoted the survey report.

She said boys are outperforming girls in literacy and numeracy skills in rural Balochistan as many as 34 percent of boys were found able to read at least sentences in Urdu as compared to 23 percent girls, adding that for arithmetic, 29 percent of Class-V boys were able to do Class-II level subtraction as compared to only 19 percent of Class-V girls.

“The ASER report highlights that 35 percent teachers in private schools are graduate in comparison to 32 percent in government schools and the findings have found 51 percent of government and 30 percent of private schools imparting multi-grade teaching,” she said adding that 74 percent private schools had boundary wall as compared to 34 percent government primary schools.

She said that similarly with regard to availability of functional toilets, it has been found that the facility was still not available in 81 percent public and 41 percent private schools in rural Balochistan.-APP