Education is a matter of life and death for Pakistan. The world is progressing so rapidly that without the requisite advance in education, not only shall we be left behind others, we may be wiped out altogether, Mohammed Ali Jinnah said in 1947, soon after the creation of this country.
When the children of the bureaucrats, politicians, senior military officers and industrialists are not going to attend public school, why would they care about reforming them? And if only the children of the poor whose voice is seldom heard are going to attend these schools, how can the reforms of public sector schools happen?
PM Yousaf Raza Gilani has termed the nationalisation of educational institutions in 1972 a mistake. Nationalisation may not have succeeded back then but we cannot consider it a failure without closer examination. It was not nationalisation that failed but the way it was implemented led to its failure. The upscale private institutions that are providing excellent education to the elite are no solution. The bulk of the children who need education are not from the elite class. Before 1972, the public sector in education at least at the school level was larger than the private sector. The key problem of the education sector was that of accessibility. Expansion of the government school network was not taking place fast enough to reach all sections of society and not keeping pace with the rapidly growing population. So the private sector finds a gap in the market place to utilise the opportunity.
The government spends less than two percent of its GDP on education one of the lowest rates in developing countries. And despite countless promises, this percentage has not really budged much over the last decade. In fact, the major increase of the early 2000s was in higher education and not in primary, middle or secondary education. The make or break issue for education in Pakistan is going to be the success or failure of efforts to reform the public education system.
BILAL ASIF
Lahore
