Filling a gap in Pakistan's school system
Posted: Monday, November 23, 2009 2:05 PM
Filed Under:
Islamabad, Pakistan
By Amna Nawaz, NBC News Producer
KARACHI, Pakistan – No one is exactly sure how old Taimur Muslim is.
A soft-spoken, lanky lad with a chipped front tooth and eyes undecided between green and gray, Taimur told me that school is his favorite part of the day, that he hates having to watch over his younger siblings at home, and that he wants to join the Army when he's older.
"I’m not very good in classes," he said through a shy smile. "But I don’t want to be a loafer. Teacher says we musn't be loafers."
Taimur told me he was 10 years old. But on that point, his voice was a little unsure. It’s an estimate – based on the fact that he began to work for a tailor full-time when he was 7 years old. He worked there for about three years, but stopped because of back problems. That’s when he came here and started kindergarten, just two months ago.
Taimur is a student at a private school in Machar Colony, a slum housing 700,000 residents on the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan’s most populous city. The school is tucked away in the narrow, trash-lined, labyrinthine streets and sits behind high walls and a guarded entrance gate. It was built and continues to be run by a Pakistani charity organization called the Citizens Foundation.
Afshan Tabassum, the school’s principal, said Taimur’s story is typical for children in the area. Parents were wary of the school at first; they were skeptical of a system that kept their children from working for part of the day and contributing to the family's income.
But within a few months, Tabassum said, the idea caught on. Parents were lining up to enroll their children, eager to give them the education they themselves never had. Most of the students, she said, work during the half-day they don't attend classes, and few have any idea how old they really are. The taller ones claim to be ten – mainly because that’s the age they think they should be.
"These kids have a very tough life," explained Tabassum. "When I first arrived at this school, I tried to visit every child's home to meet their family, to learn about their problems. I learned just how difficult these children’s lives are. Not only do they all work, they are also trying to go to school."
In Taimur's kindergarten classroom, he stands almost a head taller than most of the other students. His classmates, however, are a motley crew—some are literally half the height of others, ranging in age from 5-year-olds up to 10-year-olds. Baggy school uniforms are cinched tightly around too-slim waists. Pant cuffs are rolled up several times over to achieve the right length. During a math lesson, simple arithmetic problems on the chalk board are quickly and easily finished by some. And others are wholly incapable of completing basic addition.
But still, sitting in a solidly constructed classroom, with freshly painted walls and a clean courtyard sitting just outside windows lined with potted plants, these kids are the lucky ones. Just like nearly 10 million children across Pakistan, most children in Machar Colony slum never go to school.
Filling a need
The Federal Education Ministry published a national study in November 2008 showing that literacy rates across the country hover around 50 percent, and dip as low as 22 percent for women in underserved areas like Baluchistan. More than a third of all students who actually enroll in the public school system end up dropping out before they ever reach the sixth grade. And those statistics mark an improvement over ten years ago, when more than 50 percent of students dropped out by the same age.
The goal for Ateed Riaz, one of the founder-directors of The Citizens Foundation, is to maintain that trend of improvement.
Riaz said the government simply did not have the capacity to run the education system it nationalized in the 1970s and that the bureaucratic red-tape and political interference that now run the system have driven it into the ground. Though there have been over a dozen high-level commissions on how to fix the system, few, if any, of the recommendations have ever been implemented. Private charities and non-governmental organizations have stepped in to fill the void.
The Citizens Foundation is one such charity that raises money, mostly from expatriate Pakistanis, to build and run private schools across the country. They build schools in hard-to-reach rural or under-served urban areas and train handpicked teachers to educate as many children as they can with the standard, national curriculum.
Since its inception in 1995, the Citizens Foundation has built over 600 schools across Pakistan and enrolled 80,000 students.
But the education they receive, Riaz said, is not just about being able to read and write.
"Most of them, once they’ve graduated, will just mix and mingle with the rest of the population," said Riaz. "So once they mix and mingle, their voice should be a voice of reason, a voice of peace. I hope the children coming out of our schools are good, caring children, looking after their neighborhoods, their societies, and are more tolerant."
During English class at the Machar Colony school, the expression on Taimur’s face wavered between confusion and excitement as the teacher pointed to the letters "A," "B," and "C" written across the board. When I asked him afterwards if he enjoyed the class, he said his favorite part is learning the English translation of Pashtu words.
"Like C for Cat!" he said excitedly, pointing to a stray cat sauntering across the courtyard, and laughing excitedly. His teachers said that in the two months since he’s been at the school, he’s made big strides and attends class regularly.
Taimur said he wants to make it all the way to graduation, and is trying to convince his mother to enroll his younger siblings as well.
"I started late because I was working," he said. "But they don't have to."
Click here for more information about the Citizen’s Foundation
Amna Nawaz is an NBC News Producer reporting in Pakistan on a grant from the International Reporting Project (IRP).
