Structure of Violence in Pakistani Schools: A Gender Based Analysis

IntroductionIn Pakistan public school system is divided into three tiers. Primary schools enroll and retain students from grade 1 through grade 5, followed by enrolment in middle schools (grade 6th to grade 8th) through to high schools (grade 9th to grade 10th). In addition to this, there are higher secondary schools also, which offer enrolment from grade 9th to grade 12th. Pakistani schools, in terms of their internal environment and in terms of enrolment-related aspects exhibit multiple issues and problems. In addition to public schools, private schools also provide education, which until the beginning of 1990s were only few but since then have mushroomed quite well. The private primary schools have grown more than the middle or high schools. Despite efforts at improving public sector schools' performance1 their performance is quite low, rather degenerating, in comparison to private sector schools. Absenteeism of teachers, high dropout rates, low completion rates and high repetition rates, and inequalities of gender, power, class, geography have been identified as persistent problems (Shah, 2003). With teacher-to-student ratio of 40:1 in government primary schools (Witte, El-Bassel, Gilbert, Wu, & Chang, 2010) in a culture of authoritative teaching techniques it is not unsurprising to know that it is more damaging for children to be in schools than to be out of it; the luckier school students - against the unfortunate children herding animals or scavenging - sitting for hours in congested and crowded environment (Baer, 2012, p. 02)and being subject to punishment for minor actions such as moving or speaking in class-room stunt their mental, emotional and physical growth (DFID, 2000: 12-13). Around 20,000 public schools do not have adequate facilities such as toilets (Baer, 2012, p. 02).According to Population Council report (Council, 2009, p. iv)In Pakistan children attending primary schools are only half of the total possible schooling-going children, while in secondary schools this drop further to only quarter of the cohort and further at higher education it remains just 5 % of the total youth in the age to be attending colleges or universities for the purpose. Moreover, wide gaps exist in enrolment rates in rural and urban areas. At primary level the enrolment gap between rural and urban areas is 20%, which more than doubles at middle level (41.4%), finally reaching 50% at Matric (high school) level. A more striking fact is that 14 % of the girls are enrolled in primary schools and just 8 % girls are enrolled at middle schools (EMIS, 2011: 22). In Pakistan, gender differences in school attendance exist in all provinces and in urban and rural areas (Sathar, Lloyd, Mete, & ul Haque, 2003). According to Sathar's (2003) findings, the percentage of respondents attending school increases with higher levels of socioeconomic status. There is relatively small difference in the gap between male and female school attendance in urban areas. Moreover, she found that poverty, especially in urban areas, is a major explanatory variable for differences in school attendance for females in urban areas: in comparison to 88 % of female adolescents from the highest income group only 23%of female adolescents from the lowest income group reported to have attended schools. Thus, in the context of urban areas, class rather than gender seems to explain differences in school attendance for girls. However, in rural areas the number of males completing middle school is more than twice the number of females, which means that gender differences are more clearly pronounced: '... only 13 percent% of young female respondents in rural areas complete middle level compared to more than four times that proportion in urban areas' (Sathar, 2003: 50). Although school attainment rates are higher for males in urban areas as well but the gender differences are not that striking as they are in rural areas. Overall, Sathar (2003) concludes that '. …