Education at square one

Sixty-three years worth of disparities. I find it an illogical argument that for the majority of this country an important life-changing issue such as education will remain secondary to clothing, housing and nutrition. Why must the underprivileged be responsible for changing their own fortunes?

How come there is Shining India, with the youth from middle class Calcutta, Hyderabad, and even the smaller suburbs of Delhi and Bombay, doing well in sectors such as IT, both at home and abroad? How come the youth in these countries and cities have more opportunities than us? I pin that down to the fact that there may be a discrepancy in the quality of education at a school, but every student has the opportunity to go through a similar education system.

In the Asia-Pacific region, India, Japan and China are some examples that have tried to maintain a consistent board of education across the country. In Pakistan we are still at square one. On one hand is the ever-evolving British system and then the local federal and provincial systems. Let alone bringing it up to international standards, subsequent governments haven’t even tried to bring all the indigenous systems at par.


Not everyone can afford the external systems of education, you need Rs5,000 as registration fee and another Rs5,000 per subject, and that too is exclusive of the school fee that you have to pay for the entire year. Not many in this country can even think about spending that kind of money. In this case, it becomes even more imperative for the state to upgrade its education system.

I find it appalling that the Pakistani government believes it can spend a paltry sum of less than three per cent of the GDP on education, with approximately 30 million children in the school-going age, and get away with it.

Nations are built from ground up, not top down. Hence, until we invest in the larger section of this society, we are not going to make any changes.