Determinants of Efficiency of Public Schools in Pakistan: A Case Study of Multan District

The importance of effective allocation of resources and the quality of education sector has attracted a lot of attention in the developed countries in terms of academic performance. In contrast in developing countries like Pakistan there has been little work to estimate the performance of education sector to meet the increasing demand for improving the quality of education. The present study focuses on the assessment of technical and scale efficiency and efficiency differences among 134 public secondary schools of Multan district of Punjab province of Pakistan for the academic year 2013-2014 by two stages Data Envelopment Analysis. Number of students, percentage of teachers possessing master degree, average experience of teachers and number of classrooms has been used as inputs. While pass rate, percentage A+, A, B and C grades have been taken as outputs. Average technical efficiency of schools is 85% and 91% under CRS and VRS assumption. Majority of schools are operating on decreasing returns to scale. In 2nd stage DEA male schools showed positive significant impact on inefficiency of schools. Facility index, dummy for location and student teacher ratio was insignificant while teachers having professional degree showed unexpectedly highly significant positive impact on inefficiency scores of schools. Keywords: Education, Data envelopment analysis, Technical efficiency, Scale efficiency, Schools DOI: 10.7176/JESD/10-9-03 Publication date:May 31st 201

Exploring the Effect of Academic Qualification on teachers’ Knowledge and Awareness regarding Autism at Primary Level

The study aimed to explore the effect of academic qualification on teachers’ knowledge and awareness regarding autism at primary level. An Autistic person is unable to understand emotional states of others, fails to identify anger or sorrow, they don’t feel comfortable while communicating with others. Autistic person doesn’t have command over the language, avoids eye contact, fails to use facial expressions and gestures while interacting with others. The study was quantitative in nature and descriptive research design was used. Primary school teachers of Lahore District were the population of this study. randomly selected 300 primary school teachers were the part of this study. Self-developed questionnaire was used to collect data. The questionnaire contained information related to their personal demographics, and statements related to knowledge and awareness about Autism. ANOVA was applied to find out the difference and the results revealed no significant difference in primary school teachers’ knowledge and awareness on the basis of academic qualification

Exploring Gender differences in attitude towards Mathematics at Secondary Level in Pakistan

This study was aimed to find out the attitude towards mathematics which were communicating gender difference among secondary level students. A quantitative research approach was used to explore gender difference in relation to the attitude towards mathematics among nine graders. Fifty seven public sector schools in Lahore were selected for this research. All nine graders in public sector secondary schools were target population of current study. Eleven hundred and eighty six students were selected through multistage random sampling for present research.  A questionnaire developed by the researcher was used for exploration of gender difference in relation to students’ attitude towards mathematics at secondary level in Pakistan. It was a Lekert Scale with five points on it. The questionnaire was pilot tested and validated by experts. It was found that overall gender difference in attitude towards mathematics did not significantly exists. Therefore, the reason of difficulty in mathematics is needed to be explored for both boys and girls

Exploring Parents Involvement in University Students Education

Educationists has been focusing continuously on importance parental involvement in students’ education. This study was designed to find out parental involvement in curricular and co-curricular activities of university students. The population of this survey research was students studying in universities of Lahore Districts. Random sampling technique was used to collect data of three hundred students from different universities. The researcher constructed a questionnaire for finding out the opinions of students. After the collection of data, the quantitative data were entered in SPSS for analysis about involvement of their parents. The data was analyzed by using frequencies, percentages, means, standard deviations and correlations. Results revealed positive opinions and correlations regarding parental involvement

Word naming slows picture naming but does not affect cumulative semantic interference

Two experiments are reported which investigate the effect of processing words prior to naming target pictures. In Experiment 1, participants named (read aloud) sequences of five printed prime words and five target pictures from the same semantic category, and also sequences of five prime words from a different unrelated semantic category to the five related target pictures. Picture and words were interleaved, with two unrelated filler stimuli in between prime and target stimuli (i.e. a lag of 3 between primes and targets). Results showed that across the five target picture naming trials (i.e. across ordinal position of picture), picture naming times increased linearly, replicating the cumulative semantic interference (CSI) effect (e.g., Howard, Nickels, Coltheart, & Cole-Virtue, 2006). Related prime words slowed picture naming, replicating the effects found in paired word prime and picture target studies (e.g., Tree & Hirsh, 2003). However, the naming of the five related prime words did not modify the picture naming CSI effect, with this null result converging with findings from a different word and picture design (e.g., Navarrete, Mahon, & Caramazza, 2010). In Experiment 2, participants categorised the prime word stimuli as manmade versus natural, so that words were more fully processed at a conceptual level. The interaction between word prime relatedness and ordinal position of the named target picture was significant. These results are consistent with adjustments at the conceptual level (Belke, 2013; Roelofs, 2018) which last over several trials at least. By contrast, we conclude that the distinct word-to-picture naming interference effect from Experiment 1 must originate outside of the conceptual level and outside of the mappings between semantics and lexical representations. We discuss the results with reference to recent theoretical accounts of the CSI picture naming effect and word naming models

Multiple lump solutions and their interactions for an integrable nonlinear dispersionless PDE in vector fields

In this article, lump solutions, lump with I-kink, lump with II- kink, periodic, multiwaves, rogue waves and several other interactions such as lump interaction with II-kink, interaction between lump, lump with I-kink and periodic, interaction between lump, lump with II-kink and periodic are derived for Pavlov equation by using appropriate transformations. Additionally, we also present 3-dimensional, 2-dimensional and contour graphs for our solutions

Removal of Heavy Metals from Wastewater Using Novel Polydopamine-Modified CNTs-Based Composite Membranes

The presence of major heavy metals including Pb2+, Cu2+, Co2+, Ni2+, Hg2+, Cr6+, Cd2+, and Zn2+ in water is of great concern because they cannot degrade or be destroyed. They are toxic even at very low concentrations. Therefore, it is necessary to remove such toxicants from water. In the current study, polydopamine carbon nanotubes (PD-CNTs) and polysulfone (PS) composite membranes were prepared. The structural and morphological features of the prepared PDCN composite membranes were studied using FTIR, XRD, SEM, and EDS. The potential application of PDCNs for heavy metal removal was studied for the removal of Pb2+, Cr6+, and Cd2+ from wastewater. The maximum removal efficiency of 96.1% was obtained for Cr6+ at 2.6 pH using a composite membrane containing 1.0% PD-CNTs. The removal efficiencies decreased by 64.1 and 73.4, respectively, by enhancing the pressure from 0.50 up to 0.85 MPa. Under the same circumstances, the percentages of Pb+2 removal at 0.49 bar by the PDCNS membranes containing 0.5% and 1.0% PD-CNT were 70 and 90.3, respectively, and decreased to 54.3 and 57.0, respectively, upon increasing the pressure to 0.85 MPa. The results showed that PDCNS membranes have immense potential for the removal of heavy metals from water