ALP (Alternate Learning Pathways) a second chance for better future?
- 22100287
- May 7, 2021
- 2 min read
Pakistan has 23 million children aged between 5 to 16 who are out of school. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, alone there are more than two million of children out of school – two-thirds of them girls.
In 2018 ,with the help of UNICEF, and funding from the Government of Japan through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Pakistan started developing Alternate Learning Pathways (ALP) program in three provinces - Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Sindh – with the aim to help children resume their studies who had never been able to been enrolled in school, or had dropped out of school after primary education, and who due to their increasing age faced adversity in assimilating back in the main stream education system.
ALP centers are located in the heart of villages and offer more flexible hours than a formal school. Students go through an accelerated curriculum, enabling them to still have time to help their families at home or in the fields, or care for younger siblings: which can be a decisive factor in convincing the parents to send their children to schools.
The 380 centers in ten districts of KP, have seen the enrollment of 11,000 children, 7000 of them being girls.
One such girl is Malaika, belonging to Hangu, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, who was unable to pursue her education after primary level, as an inflammation in one her knee had left her with a limp and she was forced to discontinue her education as there was no school available inside or near her village
Fortunately, Malaika is now enrolled in one of the , ALP centers in Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. She is is back to school after a gap of 5 years, and now resuming her educational journey.
Could ALP be a way to reduce the ominous figure of World's second highest number of children out school , 23 million ,in Pakistan?
Watch this video, and please go through this article for more perspective.
Thank you for adding a solution-centric discussion to the discourse. While this and many other alternatives may qualify as informal support programs, they definitely add significantly to educational outcome, considering we have so much to recover from.
I think this initiative is an excellent example of how we need to consider the ground realities of the disadvantaged communities before bringing in any reform or imposing an existing structure on them. Unless we realize and take into account the the inequalities and inequities prevalent in our society, I believe that we would hardly be able to devise any policy that could fix our broken system. Simply building schools and hiring more teachers won't do the job. The real task is to develop alternate routes that connect with the context of the disadvantaged communities. The sooner we realize this, the better.
I love this so much. And the idea that Malaika had to stop her entire education for 5 years because of an inflammation that led to a limp... It really highlights how economic disparity favours the present and the future of those who has more economic resources available to them. I never even realized that my ability to still travel to my university despite a limp is testament to my privilege. I think this really highlights that... when you lack the economic means, there is so so much out of your control, and when more and more random variables are thrown into the mix, they become obstacles you can't overcome without some flexibility. Maybe traditional learning pathways can never work…