Sindh’s adopt-a-school policy has no far reaching impact

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Karachi

After a not-for-profit organisation adopted the Government Girls Secondary School Intelligence in Sultanabad, its students began to dream big: of flying airplanes, becoming lawyers and working as journalists. To put it in the words of one young student: “I want a degree in law so that I can fight for my rights. Meanwhile, I will write for newspapers.”

These ambitions had been missing in the largely Pakhtun student body that came from conservative backgrounds. But two years after the adoption, it was not just the building structure that improved but also the attitude of the students, who decided that education was their right and the only way out.

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The latest fad in education is public-private partnership. If private individuals step up to assist the government in improving education, the country will quickly achieve its Millennium Development Goal of achieving universal primary education by the year 2015.

Sounds good. But here’s an unsettling fact: 16 years after the Sindh Education Department introduced its adopt-a-school policy – which encouraged the private sector to parent orphaned public schools – a meagre 280 of the 47,557 public schools in the province have been adopted.

That accounts for less than 0.6 percent – a sorry figure in a province where every seventh school is non-functional.

Numbers say a lot. And in this case it is clear that the adopt-a-school policy has had no far-reaching impacts: either it is not allowing private individuals to do much, or it is a partnership where the government refuses to contribute.

“Individuals or organisations that adopt schools are caregivers for the schools. They do not own it but can take steps to improve the quality of education,” said Maria Ijaz of the Sindh Education Foundation, the government body that deals with all school adoptions in the province.

“The adopters can hire their own teachers. But they cannot fire existing teachers. They have to generate their own funds, as the government does not provide them with any monetary help.”

So is this a partnership where the adopters have to suffer? Or is this an attempt by the state to abdicate its responsibility and dump it on the private sector?

Is it a gesture through which the government makes its clear that it cannot do anything about the 29 percent out-of-school children in Sindh?

Mosharraf Zaidi, director of education advocacy programme Alif Ailaan, criticised public-private partnership in education.

“It is complete abdication of responsibility by the state. You cannot expect the private sector, whose main aim is to earn profit, to work for the welfare of the people.”

He has a point. No matter how hard the private sector tries to provide education to children who cannot afford to pay for it, its efforts will always be a drop in the ocean.

Take for example The Citizens Foundation (TCF), undoubtedly the best model Pakistan has had in the not-for-profit sector. It took them 18 years to establish 1,000 schools all over the country.

“But no matter how hard we try, we cannot replace the government. We don’t have the kind of resources the government has. At best we can provide the government with a successful model it can follow,” Ahsan Saleem, one of the TCF founders, had said at an education conference held in Islamabad.

Then there is Sabina Khatri, known for the Kiran School in Lyari, who has now adopted a government school in Ibrahim Hyderi, a fishing village in the outskirts of Karachi.

“The policy makes it clear that the adopter cannot fire a government schoolteacher. So, even if the teacher is not performing or showing the will to improve, the adopter cannot fire him. I can hire another teacher against him, paying him from my own pocket. But what happens to the public money that is being wasted on idle government teachers?” she said.

“The private teacher I hire will listen to me because I pay her salary. The government teacher does not have a reason to listen to me, as I am not responsible for her appraisal.”

Sadiqa Salahuddin, president of the Indus Resource Centre and member of the committee that oversees adoption of schools, said: “Every year we receive a long list of willing adopters and we allow only a few to adopt. Adoption has its problems: the government cannot allow too many schools to be adopted because then it will also have to screen all of those schools. At the end of the day, it is the responsibility of the state and not private individuals to educate citizens.”

For the time being, students at the Government Girls Secondary School Intelligence in Sultanabad can dream big. But until the state learns from successful adoptions – such as the one of their school – and replicates them on a massive level, their children and grandchildren may not be as lucky.

originally published here

 

In Machar Colony, knights in scrubs have come from far away

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Karachi

This is a story of a few good doctors who left their comfortable European lifestyle to aid suffering humanity in Karachi’s impoverished slum of Machar Colony.

In the process, they learnt to adapt – shed their western clothes for a modest shalwar kameez and headscarf, bear the intolerable May heat, and eat roti and spicy lentils for lunch.

Situated next to the Lyari Station on a service road off Mauripur Road, a clinic has been quietly, but efficiently, providing primary healthcare to the residents of the squatter settlement for over a year now.

The white single-storey unimposing structure in its first year delivered 498 babies, held 5,833 health sessions and treated 14,816 patients at its emergency room.

For the people living in Machar Colony where a preventable disease like measles claimed several lives last year, this is good news. For pregnant mothers, it is their only access to quality healthcare.

Inside the spotless labour room, Shamshad Begum has just given birth to her seventh child – a beautiful baby girl.

“It’s a girl again. I have five girls. Two of my children died. Because I wanted a boy so much, my sister gave me one of her sons to take care of,” she says lying on a hospital bed, surprisingly cheerful for a woman who has just given birth.

A nurse instructs her to use birth control. “I will have to ask her father,” says Shamshad pointing at her newly-born baby.

Her doctor, Katrina Nelson, does not understand a word of Urdu. It has been only a month since she arrived in Karachi. Originally from Denmark, when she signed up for the Doctors without Borders (MSF), an international not-for-profit organisation which works extensively in Asia, Africa and South America, she knew she would be travelling all around the world.

So how has the city been treating her? “It’s exciting work. Women have many more child complications in this part of the world. Many of the women we receive here are extremely anaemic,” she says.

“It’s not that they don’t know that they should rest or take breaks while having babies. But the fact is that their living conditions don’t let them take care of themselves or make decisions when it comes to childbearing.”

Marlies Degroote, a doctor from Belgium, heads the vaccination programme at the clinic. She has just returned from a long meeting planning the measles vaccination drive that will start in a few days. Dressed in a blue shalwar kameez and beige dupatta wrapped over her head, Degroote can pass for a Pakhtun woman.

“Last year we could only cover 29 percent of the population in Machar Colony for our vaccination drive against measles. Several children died last year. This year, we plan to vaccinate 69,000 children,” she says.

The colour of their skin was something that none of the locals at the squatter settlement liked. They viewed the doctors with suspicion – foreigners there to spy on them, take their pictures and sell them to America or worse, instil western ideals into their women.

“Every time you begin working in a locality, people view you with suspicion. They feel that we are intruders. It’s only natural. That’s why we need to play safe. The reason for our low vaccination coverage last year was precisely this,” says Degroote.

This year the team is prepared. They have talked to the community leaders and clerics and visited schools, madrassahs and mosques. Now they feel that the community trusts them.

They will go out in the field for vaccination without any security guards. Display of weapon or even carrying one is against their policy.

“That’s why you don’t see a security guard at our gate. We believe if the community understands that you are there to help, they will not attack.”

There was time when the clinic began receiving extortion threats from various crime gangs operating in the locality. The workers at the clinic say that the doctors invited the extortionists to the table to talk. “When they understood that the doctors did not charge patients for treatment, they apologised and never troubled us again,” says Mona Korejo, a health promotion supervisor.

So that the MSF does not become a tool for spy agencies of the world to collect information, it runs only through private donations.

Degroote excuses herself. Ruth and the others are waiting for lunch. She is hungry, “and the daal roti we just ordered is getting cold”.

originally published here