Karachi is called a “mini Pakistan” due to its unique socio-political chemistry, diversity of cultures, imbalance and blend of huge population from the both rural and urban areas. During the past few decades, demographic variations have greatly changed the lifestyle of the people economic of Karachi in civic facilities including health and education. Education is one of the important elements of social sectors that influences the society at micro and macro level. Quality of education, particularly in government secondary schools has dropped during the last few decades in Karachi. Present study, titled as, “A Study of the Significant Factors Affecting the Academic Achievements of Government Secondary Schools, Karachi” is about mainly this issue. Hypotheses were developed on important question i.e. Are the existing physical, administrative and academic facilities of the government secondary schools in Karachi sufficient to give the expected results? Hence, the study is meant to identify those scholastic and socioeconomic factors that affect the academic achievement of the contextual schools of Karachi. The study is limited to the Govt. Secondary Schools, located within six administrative districts of Karachi and working under the Education and Literacy Department, Government of Sindh, Pakistan. Education Officers, Senior School Heads, teachers, students of 573 schools and related were the population for this study based. A sample of 144 out of 573 schools was taken. During the research, three sets of questionnaires were developed for the respondents (students, teachers and parents) after ensuring validity and reliability. Rating sheet was developed to rate each of the schools in the sample against each of the situational factors by the raters (Education Officers/Senior School Heads). Data of the three years’ result of Secondary Schools Examination (held under Board of Secondary Education Karachi) and School Census Data from Sindh Education Management and Information System was transformed into software module for usage. The research was carried out in two phases. First phase of identification of 18 situation pedagogical factors (variables) was completed by scanning of the views of respondents collected through 345 questionnaires (115 by each group of the respondents). Seven of these 18 factors were found to be relating with external (home and environment) while 11 were found relating with school itself. The second phase of rating of schools against each variable during which each rater rated each of the 18 variables on the scale from 1-11 (best-worst) and scores thus obtained. Similarly, the grading score of each school was also determined through the three years’ annual examination result (held under Board of Secondary Education Karachi). Finally, with the statistical analysis, the values of correlations between “the mean scores of rating” (against each of 18 variables) and “mean score of grading of result (academic achievement)” were calculated. Result thus found was used for making inferences. According to the findings, the 18 variables i.e. were found to be significantly correlating with the academic achievements thus affecting the performance of schools. Hence, scholastic factors e.g. the teachers terms of service, theirs and school head’s competencies, basic, academic facilities in school, maintenance of school building, its location and financial stability, strict admission, examination policies and resort to tuition while domestic factors e.g. parents’ education and their occupations, household income, students’ residence and parents contact are correlate with the academic achievements. The study stressed need to attend the weak areas highlighted above. The leading recommendations were: 1. Establishing Provincial Think Tank for Education replacing the bureaucratic approach, 2. Decentralization of Powers, 3. Education Group of Services in Provincial and National Civil Services of Pakistan, 4. Pilot Programs for Subsidizing and Privatization of Unsuccessful Schools, 5. Programs for Creating Educational Leadership, 6. Declaring Emergency in Education, 7. Effective Monitoring and Inspection System, 8. Whole Campus Development Program for Selected Schools in each District. 9. Skill Development Trainings for Students and Parents, 10. Parents Awareness and Empowerment of School Management Committees Program. The study also suggested to initiate change in the mindset towards education and educationists, through mass mobilization.
Theimprovement of the teacher’s quality, including teachers in general and preschool teachers in particular, hasgained interested in many countries around the world. Currently, most countries in the world have issued a framework of competency or professional standards for teachers as a basis for preschool teachers to self-assess and be assessed for their qualities and competenciet. On that basis, preschool teachers can implement the plan of quality training, strengthen and improve professional expertise. This article, the author conducts research to evaluate the implementation of the professional standards manual of schools and the teacher's understanding of professional standards. This is considered an important factor that will contribute to improving the effectiveness of teacher ratings according to professional standards. In this study, the author uses mainly quantitative research methods (survey, descriptive statistics and inference statistics) to clarify the problems that the research has posed. Research results show that there is a relationship between standard manual training and preschool teachers' understanding of professional standards. Standards instructors have a good understanding of professional standards. Especially the training is organized by the school and the education and training department, so the training classes are small, with a small number of participants and therefore higher quality.
In this research, we will present mathematical analysis and optmal control strategies to control the spread of HIV-1 infection. For this, first we will develop a single delayed HIV-1 and discuss the effect of time delay in controlling HIV-1 infection. Once the complete dynamics of single delayed model is studied, we will extend this study to double delayed HIV-1 infection models. Incorporated time delays represent delay in contact process between pathogen virus and CD+4 cells (binding), latent period, virus production period and CTLs response. Then, to study the effect of dose-dependent infection rate in reducing HIV-1 infection, a new model is formulatedanditsstability willbediscussed. Themodelwillbeextendedbyincorporating the effect of recovery rate of unproductively infected cells to uninfected cells. Moreover, in order to reduce HIV-1 infection in the body, optimal control strategies will be developed. The aim of control strategies is to minimize the concentration of infected cells and maximize the concentration of uninfected cells. For this purpose optimal control variables will be incorporated in the proposed HIV-1 infection models with time delays and without time delays. To analyze the dynamical behavior of fractional order HIV-1 infection model, the proposed integer order HIV-1 models will be converted into fractional order model and its solution behavior will be discussed. Finally, to verify the derived theoretical results numerical simulations will be carried out for both integer and fraction order HIV-1 models.