The Federal Budget 2025-26 is a reflection of misplaced priorities, revealing the state’s persistent disregard for education. Despite claims of national progress, education continues to be sidelined. Allocating just Rs112.68 billion in a country of over 240 million, where more than 22 million children are out of school is nothing but a joke. This is less than 0.1% of Pakistan’s GDP and does not even begin to address the sector’s immense needs.
The skewed distribution is more alarming. Tertiary education gets Rs82 billion, while primary education, the foundation of learning, receives a mere Rs5.84 billion. This flawed approach has deepened the divide between the elite and the majority, leaving most children unable to complete basic schooling.
Even higher education is suffering. The stagnant budget of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) fails to match inflation or rising student numbers. Public universities are under-resourced, faculty recruitment is halted, and research is vanishing. Rather than enabling growth, the state is strangling its universities into irrelevance.
This neglect is not incidental — it is ideological. While a staggering Rs4.2 trillion is earmarked for debt servicing, education is relegated to the margins, treated as a peripheral concern rather than a national imperative. At the same time, Rs1.18 trillion in subsidies is generously extended to industries and power sectors, yet not a single rupee is channelled toward strengthening school infrastructure, enhancing literacy, or supporting foundational learning. This disparity reflects a deliberate choice: to invest in systems of survival and influence, while abandoning the systems that nurture minds and shape the future.
The argument that education is a provincial subject post-18th Amendment does not hold: the federal government still has tools to drive reform, including funding and national coordination. However, it lacks both vision and resolve.
Without a national roadmap or committed federal leadership, Pakistan’s education system is in steady decline. Elite private schools thrive, while millions of underprivileged children are left behind. This is not a mere oversight in budgeting, it is a deliberate policy of exclusion.
Dr Intikhab Ulfat
Karachi
