LAHORE – The March for Education campaign to end educational emergency is going on in full swing on the Internet, as thousands of users are signing the petition in order to urge the federal government to increase the education budget to four percent but Punjab Education Department sources claim that the department is working on its own roadmap.
The campaign started after the Pakistan Education Task Force’s (PETF) report on the “Education Emergency Pakistan Booklet”, which highlighted various alarming facts about the country’s education system including the cost of not educating Pakistan is equivalent to one flood per year and 26 countries poorer than Pakistan send more children to school.
PETF is co-chaired by Special Assistant to the prime minister Shahnaz Wazir Ali and former head of UK Delivery Unit, Sir Michael Barber. PETF includes representatives from the federal and provincial governments and civil society. According to the Punjab Education Department officials, the department had a good association with the PETF but now according to some reports, the PETF has been dissolved. They said that the Punjab School Education Department is working on the Chief Minister’s School Reforms Roadmap.
The officials said that the provincial government’s roadmap is more comprehensive and all provincial and district officers concerned are taking measures to meet their targets. Education Emergency officials said, “We want to launch a national debate, pushing education to the top of the political agenda. We are asking leaders from all political parties to make education their top priority in 2011. We believe they have a duty to work together to end the education emergency”.
The Education Emergency is using almost all cyber means to spread its message including regularly updating social networking websites including Twitter, Facebook and Flicker and appealing to citizens to sign a petition online.
More than 0.17 million people have signed the petition while the organisers aim is to get 0.2 million people on board. The March for Education is also making citizens aware about the prevailing situation of the country.
Despite the overwhelming response from the public, there are certain segments which are raising their voice against the mechanisms of the PETF claiming that practical steps be taken in order to cope with the menace of illiteracy. According to the segments, cyber campaigns might look very bright but at the end of the day, only meaningful steps could help improve education standards.
Experts claim that the government’s own stance of asking citizens to sign the petition has raised some questions in the public’s mind. A teacher said that limited role of provinces in spreading the message is questionable, when everything is being devolved to the provinces. Citizens claim that it will not be easy to cope with the education emergency even in 2011.
Citizen Sethi Mushtaq claimed on the web, “Education Emergency in a country which is worst victim of terrorism onslaught, which is facing the gravest crisis ever of power and energy crisis owing to which industries are shutting down one by one adding to the already high rate of unemployment and further leading to inflation is impossible to battle by the poor masses already ridden with poverty”.
Text of petition “We call on you to make education your number one priority in 2011 – the Year of Education – and to set out plans for giving every child their constitutional right to education. At a time of fiscal crisis, we ask you protect education budgets and to explain how, and when, they can be increased to at least 4% of GDP.”
