Quetta: Education system and infrastructure in Balochistan has been ranked lowest as compared to other provinces and federating units of Pakistan, according to District Education rankings 2017.
5th District Education Rankings were launched by Alif Ailan in Islamabad, on Thursday. The ranks are based on educational data of entire country extracted from reports of National Education Management Information System (NEMIS), Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) and Annual Status of Education Report (ASER).
The district rankings have used four separate scores for measuring the education system and infrastructure.
Education score was calculated by taking account of Learning, retention and Gender Parity ratios. Balochistan is ranked 6th Out of 8 federating units of Pakistan which include all four provinces, FATA, Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Islamabad Capital Territory.
Primary School Infrastructure and Middle School Infrastructure score were calculated by taking account of Electricity, Water, Toilet, Boundary Wall, and Satisfactory building ratios into account. Balochistan ranks 7th out of 8 in both Primary school infrastructure and Middle school infrastructure.
Beyond Primary Readiness Scores were calculated by taking account of Middle school infrastructure and Above Primary ratio. Balochistan ranked at 8th number out of 8 in this category.
Balochistan is ranked 6 out of 8 in Education score, 7 out of 8 in Primary school infrastructure and Middle school infrastructure score and 8 out of 8 in Beyond Primary Readiness scores
The District Education Rankings 2017 report further reveals that the number of schools in Balochistan with electricity has gone down from 1,836 in 2011-12 to 1,793 in 2016-17.The number of Schools with drinking water available for students has reduced from 7,646 in 2011-12 to 5,920 in 2016-17
Moreover, the number of schools with at least one toilet has increased from 1,676 in 2011-12 to 2,213 in 2016-17. The number of Schools with boundary wall has also increased from 3,154 in 2011-12 to 4,093 schools in 2016-17. Likewise, the number of schools with satisfactory building conditions have also increased from 1,414 in 2011-12 to 1,573 in 2016-17.
Analysts believe that increase in the number of Toilets and Schools with boundary walls and buildings is due to the fact that such projects are easy and favorite source for generation of kickbacks.
The report further reveals that Jaffarabad district has been most successful in the province in terms of improvement in infrastructure. Percentage of Primary schools with satisfactory building conditions has increased from 7.85% to 25.5%. Whereas the percentage of Primary Schools with electricity has increased from 19% to 46% and percentage of Primary Schools with Toilets have increased from 2% to 14%.
4th District Education Ranking report launched in 2016 had also ranked Balochistan at the lowest position. Balochistan Education department at that time had questioned the authenticity of the report.
Analysis of Education budget of Balochistan government carried out by Balochistan Voices earlier this year proved that One third of Education Development Budget or province remained unutilized in last Six years.
Similarly, a detailed Data journalism story of Balochistan Voices also proved that increasing education budget is not the solution of educational problem in Balochistan.
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