Chairman of the Citizens Foundation Mushtaq Chappra, who was recognized at an awards ceremony at the World Innovation Summit for Education in Doha on Wednesday, said absenteeism was a big problem in the nation.

“In our part of the world, every third child is out of school. Those children who are in school don’t get a quality education,” he told Arab News on the sidelines of the summit on Thursday.

“The situation is that government schools are in various stages of decay, so our job is to bring back that quality and that awareness in the children as well as in the teachers.”

He added that his focus was not on overhauling education in Pakistan, but on developing and promoting a successful model. He said the current system was riddled with high teacher absenteeism and corruption. “We haven’t reinvented the wheel, the curriculum that we are using is the state curriculum. The only difference is we have improvised it a little bit,” he said.

“We have improved on the curriculum, we have added on. We have added on good books.”

He said the foundation only provided women teachers, providing lessons to mixed classes. He added this was because parents generally did not feel comfortable with their daughters being taught by men.

According to the foundation’s school model, the teaching staff are all women, from the principal to the canteen staff.

“Before, people used to go to the local mullah if they had a problem, now they go to the principal. If this is not empowerment (of women), then what is empowerment?” he asked. “There is respect and acceptability of a women’s authority.”

He said that over the organization’s 15-year history, many girls who have graduated have come back into teaching.

“Unlike other programs, this is a very focused and a very concerted effort towards changing lives. We are creating leaders of tomorrow,” he said.

He said they had opened a placement desk, advising graduates from the foundation’s school on potential careers and generally keeping tabs on them until they have found good jobs, whether they follow the academic or vocational route.

“We are guiding them, we are counseling them, we are placing them so that they can make intelligent choices in their future,” he added.

“Give (these children) an opportunity, give them a chance, so they can compete effectively.”

Chappra said since his model was easily adaptable in other countries such as Saudi Arabia, and he expressed a willingness to share his ideas with other national education authorities free of charge.

He urged the Pakistani government to adopt his educational model in the country’s schools.

“We have 225,000 schools, primary and secondary. So unless these 225,000 schools adopt our model, nothing is going to change,” he said.

“So, our lifelong desire, would be just to get the government to understand (our vision).”