KARACHI, June 14: School managements, teachers, publishers, writers, NGOs, companies, education experts and researchers came together to review the findings of a pilot programme of the School Assessment for School Improvement (SASI) at its launch here on Friday.

The pilot programme was a joint initiative of the Idara-i-Taleem-o-Aagahi, Ilm Ideas and SASI under which 25 low-cost and affordable schools in Karachi and Lahore were assessed.

“Why do parents send their children to private schools? Do the private schools only want to earn profit or do they also want to provide good education? If they are doing good work, do they even have the resources to carry on?” were some of the questions programme director Dr Baela Raza Jamil put to the stakeholders.

“In Pakistan, we need to work together in the education sector and find solutions to the problems on a scientific basis. It is said that most private schools do not appreciate interference in their matters, but SASI, through its detailed assessments, determines a school’s quality by assessing the students’ and teachers’ academic performance, the learning environment provided there, infrastructure and facilities, the satisfaction level of parents with the school management and the institution’s financial stability. And after identifying gaps, it shares the analysis reports and recommendations with the schools to help them resolve these issues,” she said.

“Students are the primary beneficiaries of SASI. The programme is looking to create a system where the students are considered ‘central’ to the learning enterprise in spaces that allow them to thrive and grow,” she added.

Sharing her thoughts about the programme, principal of St Joseph’s College Dr Bernadette Dean said that what she liked about SASI was that it didn’t just stop at assessing, but also shared the findings with the schools to provide them the opportunity to improve themselves.

“Another good thing is that they are telling the schools about the resources out there that can be used to improve their infrastructure,” she said while suggesting that the government should also be made part of the programme.

The vice chairman of the Private Schools Management, Karachi, Shiraz Akram, stressed the importance of producing professional teachers.

“Right now we are only getting accidental teachers. But teacher training is very important if you want to raise the quality of education here,” he said.

Zakia Sarwar of the Society of Pakistan English Language Teachers said that the research done by SASI gave them the backing for knowing what to do and where to go from the point they were at.

She said that there was a lot of difference between public and private school textbooks, which the Sindh Textbook Board must look into.

“Right now a child who has been attending private school from class one to class five when admitted to a government school in class six has to study the basics of the English language all over again because it is just being introduced in that class in government schools while the private schools started teaching English in class one,” she said.

Sindh Education Foundation director Aziz Kabani said that both the government and private schools had their own set of problems.

Therefore, there should be a public-private partnership to solve these problems. He criticised the standardised testing systems in schools saying that it was because of these tests that teachers did not concentrate on increasing children’s knowledge and were more focused on helping them get good marks in the tests.

Director General of Private Schools Mansoob Siddiqui said that various education boards were split on which direction to take. “They all work separately from each other, in isolation. The lack of interaction among them is not good,” he added.

Prof Anita Ghulam Ali, the chief guest on the occasion, expressed the hope that SASI was a good initiation and it would be implemented.

She also liked the suggestion of having a public-private partnership of schools, but said that both sides should contribute equally.

She said that if private schools had become an industry that was fine as long as they put part of their profits back into their schools. About some private schools doing good work but finding it difficult to survive, she said that the Sindh government should start a fund to help such struggling schools.

Rahila Baqai of the Oxford University Press, government education officer Saba Mushtaq and Faizan Polani of SASI also spoke.