KARACHI – Contrary to the presumption of the media, both domestic and international, the education gap in Pakistan is not actually being addressed by madressahs – only six percent of students attend Madressah, according to the ‘Education Emergency Pakistan Report’ released on Tuesday by the Pakistan Education Task Force (PETF) as part of its March for Education Campaign. As far as the results of State-sponsored education are concerned, only 35 percent of school children in Pakistan, between the ages of six and 16, can read a story, while 50 percent cannot even read a sentence; their performance is only slightly better than that of out-of-school children, of whom 24 percent can read a story.
Moreover, one in 10 of the world’s out-of-school children (a number equal to the population of Lahore) is Pakistani. As many as 30,000 school buildings are in dangerous condition, posing a threat to the well being of children; while 21,000 schools have no building whatsoever. The economic cost of not educating Pakistan, according to the report, is the equivalent of one flood every year, except that this is a “self-inflicted disaster”. This is despite the fact that after the approval of the 18th Amendment, which received Presidential assent on 19 April 2010, education is no longer a privilege, but a right.
“Article 25a sets up a possible scenario where a citizen can take the government to court for not providing them access to education; it can even be the grounds for a suo moto action,” writers of the report maintain. As such, if things continue along the same lines, the government cannot possibly meet the UN-Millennium Development Goals (MDG) on education by 2015. And as things stand now, no person alive today will see a Pakistan with universal education as defined in the Constitution. Balochistan, in fact, would have access to this right only in the year 2100 or even later.
There is, however, a solution: additional annual expenditure of Rs100 billion on education – a 50-percent increase in the current budget – can yield exponentially better results in only two years. Just one year of education for women in Pakistan can help reduce fertility by 10 percent, controlling the other resource emergencies that the country faces. The issue, meanwhile, is not solely about finances; political will and articulating demand effectively are more important, according to the results highlighted in the report.
Twenty-six countries that are poorer than Pakistan send more of their children to school. Pakistan, on the other hand, spent only 2.5 percent of its budget on schooling in the 2005-06 financial year. Now, it spends even less: only 1.5 percent of the total budget is spent on education in areas that need it most. “This amount is less than the subsidies given to PIA, PEPCO and Pakistan Steel,” writers of the report said, adding that while provinces are allocated funds for education, they fail to spend the money.
The assumption that the public school system is doing poorly because teachers are poorly paid is also untrue. “Public school teachers get paid two-thirds more than their equivalent private low-cost school counterparts; they earn four times that of the average parent of a child in their school,” writers said. “Despite this, on any given day 10 to 15 percent of teachers will be absent from their duties. There is demand for education that is partly being addressed by low-cost private schools. One-third of all rural children go to these schools (public schools can cost Rs150 per month; low-cost private schools the same or up to Rs250). Donors are not the solution… government spending in the education sector outstrip donor spending by an overwhelming margin.”
