SoDATA (South Data) — About 45 per cent of children studying in the fifth standard in rural areas cannot read English sentences meant for students of Class II, a report by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) revealed on Monday.
In its report for the year 2019 released today, ASER further found that only 59pc of fifth grade students in rural areas can read stories in Urdu and other local languages including Sindhi and Pashto, which are included in the syllabus of the second standard. Furthermore, only 57pc of grade five students can solve a two-digit division problem meant for pupils in Class II.
The report covering primary education further said that 60pc of the students in the fifth standard can tell time correctly and solve addition word problems. Only 53pc can solve multiplication word problems.
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The statistics gathered from surveys held in urban areas are considerably better than those of rural areas where government schools are predominant.
According to the UNICEF, nearly 10.7 million boys and 8.6 million girls are enrolled at the primary level and this drops to 3.6 million boys and 2.8 million girls at the lower secondary level.
“While enrollment and retention rates are improving, progress has been slow to improve education indicators in Pakistan.”
An estimate shows that 63% of the country’s population live in the rural areas, and 31% of the total population is in the 0-14 years age group.
The report says a huge gap was found in the number of schools that had functional toilets: 89pc of private sector schools had functioning bathrooms as compared to 59pc of government schools.
The original article appeared in Dawn
