Artificial Intelligence: An inclusive procedure to enhance effectiveness of scientific based educational learning
PESHAWAR : The country with around 22.8 million students are out of schools due to lack of socioeconomic imbalances and having a wide gap among academic institutions, industry and management necessitated speedy implementation of artificial intelligence procedure for better education outcomes.
For education sector, artificial intelligence is very important as it enhances the speed, precision and effectiveness of human efforts in teachings and help the management for speedy decisions-making. AI techniques can be used to identify, which teaching methodology can be adopted for fast and accurate academic scoring besides automate manually intense data management tasks and countering challenges of alleged ghost teachers and students’ enrollment.
For the first time in the country’s history, artificial intelligence system was installed in the elementary schools education foundation schools of KP.
Zariful Mani, Managing Director, Elementary Schools Education Foundation (ESEF) said that Artificial Intelligence based cameras attendance devices installations was started successfully in the government schools for live attendance of students and teachers.
He said that AI devices in schools would help ensure quality of education, transparency and improve performance of the students and teachers.
The MD said the School Management Information System was developed by ESEF e- governance cell to ensure transparency, quality education and easy transfer of scholarship amount to the partners smoothly.
Appreciated the whole team for launching of AI, he said it would turned around and transform the education program which went wrong due to mismanegement in the past.
For the country like Pakistan where about 22.8 million children are out of schools including 4.7 million in KP due to poverty, artificial intelligence was need of the hour.
The Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) 2021 survey has revealed that there were about 22.8 million out-of-schools children (OSCs) in the country including 4.7 million children aged between 5 to 16 years in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The OSC included 2.9 million girls and one million belonged to merged tribal districts. Similarly, 74.4 percent of girls and 38.5 percent boys are out-of-school in the province.
Besides 77 percent reported OSC in Palas Kolai, 70 percent in Upper Kohistan and 69 percent in Upper Kohistan, there are reports of about 61 percent of such children in Torghar, 55pc in Shangla, 53 percent in Lakki Marwat and 51 percent each in Tank and Batagram districts.
In merged areas, 66 percent of children are out-of-school in North Waziristan, 63 percent in Bajaur, 61 percent in South Waziristan, 51 percent each in Mohmand and Khyber, and 47 percent each in Kurram and Orakazai and bringing them under school net was a big challenge for the provincial government.
PM-N KP spokesperson and member provincial assembly Ikhtiar Wali Khan while terming the BISP’s survey findings as alarming, said that it negates tall claims of PTI government regarding an increase in children’s enrolment in the schools and uniform education policy.
The education sector, he said was devolved to provinces under the 18th constitutional amendment and under article 25-A of the constitution, it was the responsibility of the provincial governments to provide free and compulsory education to all children up to metric level.
He said neither promises of uninformed education were fulfilled nor the dual education system was abolished in the province, adding that private schools continued sucking the blood of millions of people with a roaring increase in tuition fee while PTI leadership paid a deaf ear to it.
He said educational monitoring officers had recently staged protest strikes against KP government for taking irrelevant duties from them including dengue emergency survey, price monitoring, COVID SOPs, polio duty supervision, election duties, citizen portal report flood relief and rehabilitation survey having no additional financial packages.
The BISP while taking cognizance of the high ratio of OSC in the country including Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has started Education Scholarship programs to motivate parents to enroll their children and discourage student’s dropout rate.
Under the BISP, Rs1500 per three months were being provided to each boy student and Rs2000 to girl at primary level, Rs2500 for boy and Rs3000 for girl at the secondary level and Rs3500 for boy and Rs4000 per girl at higher secondary school level.
Since the inception of the BISP, 9.4 million children were enrolled and Rs40 billion were disbursed under BISP’s Education Scholarship program.
Syed Shahab Khan, Senior Planning Officer, Education Department said that a Rs3.7 billion project has been planned for education stipends to students of class 1-12 and Rs500 million for school bags and stationary in merged areas.
He said 200 alternate learning pathways centers would be opened for children aged 9-16 for OSC while Rs3 billion would be spent on converting two rooms schools to six rooms besides converting mosques schools into schools.
The construction of 100 new primary schools was proposed for the upcoming fiscal year while 150 middle schools to secondary schools in settled districts would be achieved.
He said a Rs. one billion project was proposed for the establishment of early childhood education program to be executed next fiscal year.
Shahram Khan Tarkai, Minister for Education, told the news agency that a second shift in government schools were started to OSC.
He claimed that 850,000 students were enrolled this year in KP, adding that COVID-19 was the main reason behind the increase of drop-out of students.
About 50,000 students were enrolled in 1,443 second shift schools. He said Stars of KP, Rehamatul Alamin and ETEA merit scholarships were launched to increase the student’s enrollment. (APP)
