Around 80 percent primary and middle schools in Swabi District of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province are furniture less. I myself visited different schools across the district during the month of February and March 2016. Mostly schools are furniture less and students use to sit on ground even without carpet or any cloth sheets.
School teachers say that many schools were well furnished during the tenure of former education minister Sardar Hussain Babak and other facilities were available. Mr Babak said he did his best for education across the province. “I have provided the facilities equally in all districts and Tehsils in KPK in during my regime. The sitting government was putting lame excuses and blaming the opposition.” A Government primary school Swabi headmaster said that every government launches a new system of education but resultantly students get frustrate and leave schools. He opined that every government experimented with education but the result remained zero. He said now the KPK government should start English medium education from class one instead of Class 5 or 6. He said it was not possible for the students to convert into English medium, who do not know how to read or write even Urdu. Many school teachers believed that the sitting government and the education minister were doing nothing good for the education in KPK. They said that almost 80 % schools are furniture less. Government is not paying heed to make better education system except security situation. They said that security was better but other things were same as were during the Awami National Party regime. Senior citizens said that KPK government needed to focus on school education on war footing basis because education was linked to all problems of the province.

(The writer is a Mass Communication graduate and he can be reached at [email protected])