• by Zofeen Ebrahim (karachi)
• Wednesday, March 23, 2011
• Inter Press Service

The man known as ‘Master Ayub’ holds classes for free, between three and seven o’clock. His classroom is a public park, and his students are street children six to 16 years of age who otherwise would be picking trash, begging, or slowly becoming petty thieves.

Thanks to Master Ayub, these children have an education, and a future. All across Islamabad, Ayub bumps into young men and women - former pupils who greet him with reverence.

'It is the highest form of gratification. My former students have become nurses; hold positions in government offices like police, and even in the armed forces. There is one who is now the editor of a newspaper!' Ayub told IPS.

Ayub, who holds a day job as a fire fighter, has been helping to educate poor Pakistanis for more than 26 years. He has taught some 4,000 students, and has a current batch of 280. He manages to cover only a fraction of the seven million out-of-school children the educational system here has been unable to reach.

Pakistan may need thousands more like Master Ayub to provide citizens quality education - an obligation that is now falling on private individuals and non-government organisations.

The task ahead is huge. Early this month, the Pakistan Education Task Force came out with a report called ‘Education Emergency - Pakistan’ that is to be the basis of a new national policy on education. The report makes for compelling but grim reading. 'One in 10 of the world’s children not in primary school live in Pakistan,' according to the report. 'At least seven million children are not in primary school.'

The report estimates that 26 countries poorer than Pakistan are able to send more children to primary school. If the pace persists, the report warned, 'full primary enrolment may not be achieved before mid-century.'

Although the grim statistics demand urgent measures, some educators question why yet another new education policy is being drawn up, when previous ones have been drawn up, but remained mostly unfulfilled.

There have been as many as 13 grand schemes to address Pakistan’s education problem, all coming to naught, said Pervez Hoodbhoy, an educator who has been part of numerous education committees and has even headed a few over the past 20 years.

Hoodbhoy called it a waste of time. 'Nothing that was agreed upon was ever implemented,' he said, with every new government putting out its own policy and throwing out the old one without reading it. 'There is no credible implementation mechanism, no financial planning, and no attempt to understand why the previous policy failed,' Hoodbhoy explained.

A.H. Nayyar, an academic who wrote a 2003 report entitled ‘The Subtle Subversion: The State of Curricula and Textbooks’, said the reason officials at the top are not bothered by public education is that they send their children to expensive private schools in Pakistan or abroad. 'How much does it take for them to pass a law that the children of government servants must all attend public schools? This single step will change the nature of public education dramatically,' Nayyar said.

Neelam Habib, spokesperson of The Citizens Foundation (TCF), is offering government a solution. Habib is urging government to replicate TCF’s model to boost school enrolment.

Some 15 years ago, disillusioned by the government’s inaction, a group of influential, educated and concerned citizens decided to put their money where their mouths were.

They created TCF, which has taken the sector by the horns - building entire schools in areas where there were none, training teachers, and even setting up their own teacher training system.

So far, TCF has been able to provide quality education to over 102,000 students - in 71 cities.

In the process, TCF learned some valuable lessons. 'Parents are ready to pay for education and send their kids to schools if the latter are safe, effective, affordable and in the neighbourhood,' Habib said.

'The poor know very well that educating their children will get them better jobs,' said Hoodbhoy. While the demand for education is high, the supply of reasonable quality education is low. 'Kids who go to public schools learn so little. They encounter poor facilities, ill-trained teachers who often do not turn up for work, and frequent beatings.'

And that is why TCF schools are different. 'We have given our kids all the facilities a kid of any private school would expect,' Habib said.

A TCF education is heavily subsidised by the foundation. In some of its schools, 90 percent of parents can afford to pay only 10 rupees (12 U.S. cents) per child. The amount is less than what a private school - even in squatter settlements - would charge, which would be a minimum of 350 rupees (4.11 dollars) per child.

Like TCF, Master Ayub is putting forth his own resources and efforts to help solve the country’s illiteracy problem. He started teaching working children in an open market place, but after the number increased to over 200 15 years ago, he decided to shift his pupils to a public park.

Part of Ayub’s income as a fire fighter goes toward buying his students books and stationery and an even more essential ingredient - candy - which he says works like magic. Today six of his former students, now in college, assist him. 'In return I pay for their college tuitions,' he says.

Ayub’s own three children pay for their own college tuitions by working as tutors. Ayub said, 'If each one of us teaches another citizen, we can come out of the illiteracy conundrum.'

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service