Financing education: Experts, opposition politicians question Punjab’s priorities

Government accused of extravagance with scarce funds.

LAHORE:

“Had the extravagant Rs3 billion allocation for the much-hyped Daanish Schools been used for the development of the existing infrastructure, hundreds of schools across the Punjab would not have become ghost schools,” Dr Salman Humayun, the Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (I-SAPS) executive director said on Monday.

He was talking to the participants of a discussion organised by the I-SAPS in collaboration with Campaign for Quality Education and Department for International Development (DFID) to discuss and analyse the financing and quality of education in Punjab.

The discussion was the second organised by the I-SAPS in Lahore, this time with representatives of various political parties, to bring about a general consensus on education financing. Dr Humayun presented findings of an I-SAPS research project on education financing in Punjab. He also advocated the formation of policies with a political and technical consensus.

Dr Humayun said there was no allocation for the restoration of 2,000 schools damaged in last year’s flood.

He said so far only 500 schools had been repaired in the flood hit areas.

He questioned the rationale for Punjab government’s priorities in allocating a huge budget for Daanish Schools when Rs2 billion was required for the flood affected schools.

Ahsan Wyne from the Awami National Party praised the research. He said Pakistan had been was a country where 25 per cent of the budget was allocated for defence and 1.8 per cent for education. He stressed the need for all political parties to nominate their members for various ministries according to their profile.

Waqas Jafri, the Jamaat-i-Islami naib ameer, said that over the last five years, public expenditure on education had decreased in real terms.

Mohsin Leghari, the PML-Q representative, accused the chief minister of allocating budgets to ‘friends.’ He also accused the Finance Department of untimely release of resources. Leghari presented a proposal saying that the productivity of schools was a good indicator of the effectiveness of the education policy.

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf brought the notion of one educational system to the table, stressing its need to identify a common ideology for education policy in every province.

PML-N’s Arfa Khalid defended her party saying that Daanish Schools were PML-N’s pride.

She said it was an attempt to create model schools for children who could not afford expensive education.

Chaudhry Javed Ahmed, chairman of standing committee for education, said that there indeed was a separate budget allocation for flood-hit schools. He said the delays in implementation of policy had been brought to the government’s notice.

In his concluding remarks, Dr Humayun said that efforts must be made for efficient allocation of funds in education. He said that a data-policy-budget connection should be identified and established.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 13^th, 2011.