After floods, future of education at risk for millions of students in Pakistan

KARACHI: The recent floods in Pakistan are likely to have a major impact on education in Sindh province where administration officials have already started warning that nearly 2.5 million children could go out of school in coming days.
The unprecedented monsoon rains and floods have killed about 1,300 people in Pakistan since the beginning of the season in June, though Sindh has turned out to be the worst affected region where 492 people have lost their lives and at least 14.6 million have been uprooted.
Many of the displaced people have found shelter in public schools in areas where such institutions have not been washed away.
“People will survive while eating whatever little they get and go back home,” provincial education minister Sardar Ali Shah told Arab News on Saturday. “However, our children may go out of school which is alarming for the society.”
Shah said initial surveys suggested that nearly 15,000 schools were either partially or fully damaged in floods, making it difficult for their administrations to continue with the academic activity.
He informed that 5,000 other schools were currently providing refuge to flood-affected people.
“Nearly 2.5 million students are enrolled in these 20,000 schools,” he continued. “We don’t have resources to make 20,000 schools functional even after flood water recedes. There is fear that these students may permanently go out of school.”
Shah urge international partners and non-government organizations to help the Sindh administration deal with this “most alarming” aspect of the natural calamity.
He said it was not possible to stop flood victims from taking shelter in schools, though the district administration should have given them alternative accommodations.
Shah maintained it was not possible to immediately resume formal education in flood-affected regions, though he added the government was going to launch temporary learning centers.
The first such center, he informed, would be inaugurated in Umerkot on Monday.
Of all the schools providing shelter to flood-affected people, more than 10 are situated on the outskirts of Karachi where teachers believe the authorities could have easily accommodated the displaced people at facilities previously used as quarantine centers for COVID-19 patients.
“At least 10,000 children cannot to attend these schools in Karachi [due to the current situation],” Javed Shah, a teacher at Government Boys’ Primary School in Sachal, told Arab News.
“It took us several months to resume classes when flood-affected people were accommodated here in 2010,” he continued.
Dr. Ayesha Razzaque, an independent scholar on education in Pakistan, said it was unlikely that the government would do much about the situation until its development partners and local organizations came to its rescue.
“Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have a poor track record of reconstructing schools,” she said while mentioning instances from the past. “There’s no reason to suggest that they are on top of things now.”
She added that Sindh was already lagging behind in the education sector, adding the recent floods were likely to further aggravate the situation.
Under the circumstances, Razzaque said, there was need to ensure that children of flood-hit families had some sense of support and normalcy in their lives.
“They need to know that people care for them,” she continued. “We cannot abandon them. So yes, tent schools and wellbeing support are crucial.”
Meanwhile, Maria Qayyum, a seventh-grade student at Government Girls’ Secretary School, urged the government to restart classes at her education institute.
“I feel for the children and their families who have taken shelter in my school,” she told Arab News. “But they should be moved to better places so I can resume my studies.”