Rupak D Sharma in Pokhara

At the library of Sishu Shishu Kalyan Primary School in Bharatpokhari, around 10km from scenic western city of Pokhara in Nepal, a drawing hanging on the wall shows a cigarette and a cross on top of it. The title of the sketch warns: “Don’t Smoking”.

This gives a hint of the quality of English that the primary school is offering. Ironically, the state-owned Shishu Kalyan had recently changed its language of instruction from Nepali to English to compete with private schools in the locality, which were attracting more students due to their English medium courses.

The initiative taken by this school—where most of the government-run institutions fail to adapt to change as long as they get state subsidy—is praiseworthy. But what kind of products will it generate is a big question.

This kind of quality-related problem in education sector is not only prevalent in Nepal. In India, a survey conducted in 28 states found that 38.2 per cent of the Grade 1 students could not read alphabets and 53.7 per cent failed to identify numbers. While 47 per cent of children in Grade 5 could not even read a Grade 2 text fluently.

Another study conducted in Pakistan showed that a bare majority of Grade 3 students had mastered the Grade 1 mathematics curriculum and only 31 per cent could correctly form a sentence with the word ‘school’ in the vernacular Urdu. While in Laos, only 1 per cent of the children completing Grade 5 were found to have reached a level of competency in mathematics that would allow them to continue their studies further. The corresponding figure for language was 17 per cent.

These instances sum up the quality of education provided by public schools in Asia, where enrollment rates in primary and secondary levels have increased significantly in the last two decades but very few are getting the kind of education that would make them competitive and ensure them decent jobs in the future.

This low quality of education is feared to take a toll on the children of poor families.

As is known, most of the students attending public schools belong to economically disadvantaged families. These families do not even earn US$1 a day and thus cannot afford expensive private school education. Low quality education in this segment means imparting knowledge and skills that will not get recognition in the market.

In today’s knowledge-based society, where people can also generate self-employment through the education, low quality education will ultimately force them and their families to stay in the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.

Another important feature of the students belonging to economically disadvantaged families is that they are first generation learners whose parents have never attended school and do not know the true value of education. If these first generation learners do not see tangible benefits of formal education, they, like their parents, will not consider going to school a worthwhile mission. This may increase their chances of dropping out of school, Rakha Rashid, education specialist of United Nations Children’s Education Fund (Unicef) tells AsiaNews on the sidelines of United Nations Girls Education Initiative (Ungei) Global Advisory Committee meeting held recently in Kathmandu, Nepal.

So who should be blamed for this situation?

As many reports have said, one of the important factors affecting student achievement is teachers. A study conducted among 400,000 students in 3,000 schools worldwide concluded that “while school quality is an important determinant of student achievement, the most important predictor is teacher quality”.

This is where Asia seems to be lagging behind.

Although Southeast and East Asia seem to be having relatively more number of qualified teachers, the situation is particularly startling in South Asia. In Nepal, only 31 per cent of the teachers have received professional training. In Bangladesh, the number is 48 per cent, while in Afghanistan only 36 per cent of the teachers are trained.

“Even in countries where more than 70 per cent of teachers have received professional training, one finds wide variation across different regions,” says professor Rangachar Govinda of National University of Education Planning and Administration of New Delhi.

For instance, the northeastern states in India have a very low proportion of trained teachers compared with other regions. While in other countries, schools located in difficult terrain and schools attended by linguistic minority groups suffer from lack of trained teachers.

But in some cases it is also apathy of teachers. In countries like Nepal, public school teachers usually draw more salary than private school teachers and are at times better trained than private school teachers. However, their performance seems to be lagging behind mainly due to their focus on their private businesses rather than on school work.

This is where organisations like Ungei have to intervene, says Rajan Sharma, advisor of Education Journalists Group, Nepal.

Ungei—which has now taken the initiative of providing quality education to all the children, including those with disabilities and HIV/AIDS—comprises representatives of major donor agencies, including the World Bank and DFID, Danida and Norad, the international development agencies of the UK, Denmark and Norway, respectively.

“Ungei should urge these donor agencies to create pressure on governments to put education on top of the agenda and introduce programmes to enhance the quality of teachers,” says Sharma.

Adds Els Heijen-Maathuis, regional representative of Save the Children-Sweden for South and Central Asia: “Delay in providing proper education to teachers may prove to be detrimental to the achievements made in increasing the enrollment rates of students in schools.”Published in AsiaNews