Article 25A was inserted in the fundamental rights section of the Constitution via the 18th Amendment. 25A. Right to Education: The state shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to sixteen years in such manner as may be determined by law.
The 18th Amendment to the Constitution also brought about another big change. By removing the concurrent list the subject of education has been made a provincial subject completely. So, it will be the responsibility of the provinces to ensure that 25A is implemented in letter and spirit.
We also know that not all 5-16 year olds are enrolled in schools in Pakistan. Far from it, though gross and net enrollment rates have become better at the primary level, they are still not universal. And drop out rates, starting from first grade onwards, are so large that by the time 5th grade ends, the majority of Pakistani children are no longer in school.
But this is supposed to change with the implementation of the 18th Amendment. All children will get access to free education. In fact, 25A is making a much stronger statement. It is saying that the state shall provide compulsory education to all 5-16 year olds. If education is to be compulsory then it means we cannot have any 5-16 year old not having education. By wording, 25A in this way the state has certainly set a large task for itself.
Since 25A is a part of the fundamental rights section of the Constitution, citizens have a right to demand the implementation of fundamental rights. And any infringement of fundamental rights should be taken very seriously by the judicial system of the country. Otherwise what is the point of terming something as a fundamental right of a citizen?
So if the lack of implementation of 25A has not been challenged in the courts already, it soon will be and it should be. The citizens of the country have been waiting for their rights to be implemented for a long time now and if the 18th Amendment has given education as a basic right, it should be delivered.
But irrespective of the challenge in the courts, the provinces should be getting plans ready for implementation of 25A. The government is responsible for ensuring the implementation of the basic rights of people. If the Constitution says that children have a right to education, and if the provinces are responsible for ensuring this now, then the provinces should be preparing plans of how this is going to be achieved.
If challenges come through the courts, the courts are also likely to ask provincial and federal government to share plans as to how they are hoping to achieve the fulfillment of 25A.
We know that 25A cannot be implemented too quickly. There are millions of children out of school. Millions more drop out before they turn 16. In fact a very small percentage of our children are in school when they turn 16. How are we going to turn the situation around?
We need details of how many new schools do we need, who is going to open them, where are the teachers going to come from, what material do we need for teaching these children, and most importantly, who is going to pay for these increases and from where.
The government has, over the last decade or so, more or less given up on education. It has been talking a lot about private sector and private-public partnerships as a way of addressing the education provision issues. And though private sector has expanded a lot over the last couple of decades, providing for some odd 35 percent of school-going children in the country, this is a far cry from providing education to all children across Pakistan.
In particular, we have found that the private sector is keen, not surprisingly, to serve the more lucrative and higher return segments of the society but is much less willing to go to rural areas, areas that have fragmented markets or areas that have very poor families. Even with all the growth of the private sector, and with millions not in schools still, public sector serves some 65 percent of enrolled children. So, if there are going to be plans for meeting the goals set by 25A, public sector will have to play the crucial and important role in this.
Given the scale of the issue, it will not be practical to think that any province can fulfill the requirements in a year or so. Just the fact that thousands of schools need to be opened and/or upgraded, thousands of teachers need to be recruited and trained, and we need to think of innovative ways of using existing resources (double shifts and so on) means that provinces need to develop 5 to 10 year plans for reaching the goal of quality education for all children in Pakistan. The provinces will also need the help of not only the private sector in this but of the federal government as well as the donors interested in seeing education become universal.
It is time for provincial governments to start thinking about implementation of 25A. The 18th Amendment has made education a basic right and it has also made it compulsory. It is pointless to talk of rights if they are not implemented and treated as trump cards that give them importance over other claims on resources.
The writer is an Associate Professor of Economics at LUMS (currently on leave) and a Senior Advisor at Open Society Foundation (OSF). He can be reached at [email protected].
