Karachi: Expressing grave concern over reports about the presence of 'ghost schools' in Sindh, Pasban Democratic Party (PDP) Chairman Altaf Shakoor here Sunday said that the schools that exist only on paper and fail to provide children with an education must be identified, independently verified, and restored to full operation.
He said Sindh cannot afford to have schools that exist in government records but fail to function as genuine centres of learning. Every such 'ghost school' represents more than an administrative failure. It represents children who may be deprived of an opportunity to learn, families denied a basic public service, and public resources that may not be producing the educational outcomes for which they were intended.
He said the time has come to let the ghost schools disappear-not by deleting them from official records, but by turning them into real, functioning schools.
He said a school should not be considered functional simply because a building exists, a school code has been assigned, or the institution appears on an official list. "A functioning school requires teachers who are present, students who can attend, usable classrooms and a basic environment in which meaningful education actually takes place. If a school exists on paper but children cannot receive education there, the distinction between a school and a ghost school becomes difficult to defend."
The first priority should therefore be a comprehensive and independently verifiable assessment of government schools throughout Sindh, he said. Every school should be physically verified and its actual status established. The exercise should determine whether the school exists and is accessible, whether teachers posted there are actually attending, whether enrolled students are attending classes, whether classrooms and basic facilities are usable, and whether the institution is operating according to its officially recorded status.
Modern technology can also make verification easier through geo-tagging, dated photographs, attendance records and publicly accessible school information, he said.
Altaf Shakoor said a recent report about posting of more than 50 teachers in a government school in Ghotki where only some 21 students are reportedly enrolled tells a lot about the performance of the Sindh education department. He said in many government schools more than the required number of teachers are posted because of political pressure or bribery factors: both of them should be addressed seriously.
Welcoming the new Facial Recognition Attendance Monitoring and Evaluation (FRANES) System in Sindh education department, he said all available technology and artificial intelligence tools must be used to improve delivery at the government schools in Sindh.
He said the people of Sindh have a right to know how many government schools are functioning, how many are not, why they are not functioning and what is being done to correct the situation.
He said school-level information should be made sufficiently transparent to allow citizens, elected representatives, journalists and civil society organisations to monitor progress.
Where credible evidence indicates deliberate falsification of records, prolonged negligence, systematic absenteeism or misuse of public resources, those allegations should be properly investigated and appropriate action taken, he said.
Accountability, however, should not end with identifying individuals. The system that allowed a school to become non-functional in the first place must also be examined. Otherwise, one ghost may disappear only for another to emerge elsewhere.
He asked that teacher attendance and student participation should be monitored regularly, while communities should have a meaningful role in reporting problems. Serious allegations concerning public funds or falsification of records should be subject to independent scrutiny.
He said Sindh does not need more schools that exist only in statistics. It needs schools where children are welcomed, teachers teach, classrooms function and families can see a genuine future for their children.
The answer to ghost schools is not to make them disappear from government lists. The answer is to make the ghosts disappear by bringing the schools themselves back to life, he said.
He said a recent report about posting of more than 50 teachers in a government school in Ghotki where only some 21 students are reportedly enrolled tells a lot about the management system of Sindh education department. He said in many government schools more than the required number of teachers are posted because of political pressure or bribery factor: both of them should be addressed seriously.
He also demanded to take notice of the complaints about corruption in TEO and DEO offices, as well as, the office of the Accounts General Sindh, where bribes are extorted from teaching and non-teaching staff even for legitimate work.
He said the ghost schools would not disappear unless corruption is wiped out from the Sindh education and literacy department, where bribery rates even for the transfer of teachers are reportedly fixed by high level bosses.