Falling quality of education at schools needs attention

THE state of secondary level education in the country is utterly disappointing at a time when the pass rates and number of GPA-5 grade performers in public examinations are getting higher every year. News report on Wednesday said referring to a survey report that around 51 percent of eighth graders do not have expected level of performance in English and 46 percent lack proficiency in Mathematics. Eight graders produced poorer results than students at sixth grade. The results proved futile the government’s mythical claim of big success in education and exposed the utterly poor quality of education at secondary level.
Why students failed to reach the expected level of performance has not a single answer. Faulty questions, complex textbooks, flawed teaching systems are some of the reasons but what is more significant is that a highly politicized environment lacked the entire system any unaccountability from the top. Teachers are in most cases politically appointed and not qualified for teaching, students are not under pressure to learning and there is a total chaos in the administration of schools and colleges to demand higher performance when most officials lacked competence to better run academic institutions.  
The poor state of performance that the survey has produced is an eye opener to call for improving the quality of education at this stage. Because, if students are not performing well at lower level, particularly if they are legging behind in English and Arithmatics as the survey highlighted they will not be able to perform better at higher education level and make a better career at the end. The survey conducted by Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE) on 31,620 students – both boys and girls at Class VI and Class VIII in 32 districts highlighted on some critical aspects. It found that sixth graders did better than the eighth graders. Moreover, students in the rural areas showed poor performance compared to those in the cities suggesting the need for more support to schools in rural areas. The results of the Secondary Schools Certificate Examination this year’s also showed such gap that need to be taken into account seriously.
Educationists believe that since secondary school students are increasingly turning to guidebooks and private tuition a section is doing well while others are falling behind. This is more so in case of schools in rural areas. Many tend to say that the education budget is not enough, which is true, but we want to say that whatever budget is available is not properly used to improve the quality of education. For instance, most budget for training in fact is being misused politically.
We must say, we have to do everything now to refocus efforts to improve the quality of education at lower level to create quality manpower through higher education. There is no alternative to it.