Education crisis

The recent Household Integrated Economic Survey reveals how far Pakistan still lags in terms of education. While some people would proclaim success by noting that the national literacy rate has inched upward to 63% and enrolment is also up, the figures are still among the worst in the world. Meanwhile, some 20 million children — or 28% of student-age kids — are not even enrolled in schools. This is nothing short of a national emergency, failure to address which will make it impossible for the country to ever truly shine.

The education statistics also reflect profound inequalities in society. The crisis is clearly gendered, with nearly one in three girls excluded compared to one in four boys. Geographically, 45% of children in Balochistan and 39% in Sindh are out of school, compared to 21% in Punjab, and even the figure for Punjab is atrocious in a global context. Shockingly, 1 in 5 children have never even been inside a classroom, while the other 8% dropped out, mostly for economic reasons, the blame for which often tracks back to other problematic government policies, such as austerity. The same survey also shows there has been a dramatic spike in food insecurity. A hungry child cannot learn, and a family in survival mode cannot prioritise education.

Also notable is the fact that education spending is now less than 1% of GDP. The only way to address this problem quickly is to heavily invest in measures such as direct financial support to students that could encourage poor families to keep their children in school, a massive scaling-up of alternative learning pathways and a massive spike in the education budget for primary and secondary education, rather than higher education, which can be open to abuse as a virtual subsidy for students from wealthier backgrounds and the professors and owners of universities.

Every child out of school is a failure of the state, and given the amount of blame there is to go around, the provinces would be well advised to put their differences aside and work on holistic national-level solutions, rather than just localised ones.