Alif Ailan, an education advocacy campaign, launched its district education rankings for all Pakistan. In those rankings Balochistan was placed at the bottom most position even below FATA. Ranking of Balochistan has fallen down from 7th to 8th position in Pakistan in latest report.
District education rankings are based on education and school infrastructures scores which are extracted from publicly available data of different government departments and bodies.
According to the district education report issued by Alif Ailan, 27 out of 32 districts of Balochistan rank outside of top 100 districts in Balochistan. Eight of the bottom ten districts are from Balochistan.
Read also: Pakistan District Education Rankings Launched
However, Education department of Balochistan is not happy with the findings of the Alif Ailan report and they plan to publically refute them.
Aziz Ahmed Jamali, Additional Secretary Education department, told Balochistan Voices that Education department plans to rebut the rankings and scores allotted to Balochistan in the District education Rankings.
Alif Ailan’s report has discouraged all of our efforts without understanding the context of Balochistan – Aziz Jamali
“We are doing our level best in our given circumstances and Alif Ailan’s report has discouraged all of our efforts without understanding the context of Balochistan,” complained Mr. Jamali.
He further said that Alif Ailan has a disabling approach rather than an enabling approach when it comes to dealing with education in Balochistan
Mr. Jamali also questioned the role of Alif Ailan in the education enrollment campaign of Balochistan government. “Alif Ailan did not contribute in Education Enrollment campaign but they criticize all our efforts based on speculations,” he said.
Read also: Enrollment Campaign: 72 Percent Target Achieved
Additional Secretary Education department also challenged the authenticity of number of out of school children quoted by Alif Ailan.
Alif Ailan claims that up to 2.5 million children are out of school in Balochistan.
He said that total enrollment in government schools is 1,137,000 and in private schools and Madrassahs is 700,000, which makes the total enrollment in the province to be 1,837,000.
“Estimated number of school age children, 5 to 16 years, in Balochistan is 2.84 million as projected from 1998 census and 35 percent of them are out of school which makes the figure of 1,008,523 which is 1.5 million less than what Alif Ailan claims,” explained Mr. Jamali.
He said that due to efforts of education department World Bank is funding Global Partnership for Education (GPE) project in Balochistan and other international donors have also expressed Interest.
“Discouraging and sensational reports by Alif Ailan can damage the positive and challenging steps taken by education Department,” Mr. Jamali told Balochistan Voices.
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