Educating the youth

Government has launched a programme which aims to educate 3 million children of primary school-going age.

Pakistan is one of the few countries in the world where education is not a right, it is a privilege. The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution declares, “The state shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to 16 years.” Unfortunately, this constitutional statement is aspirational rather than factual. Functional illiteracy in Pakistan hovers around the 50 per cent mark and many children are put to work because of economic factors rather than sent to school. Successive governments have done little to make education a priority, although now there is finally a sign that this may be about to change. The government launched a four-year programme, called Waseela-e-Taleem, that aims to educate three million children of primary school-going age.

The hopeful news is that the programme will be run under the umbrella of the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), one of the few welfare success stories that we have had. It will also concentrate on ensuring that female students are especially targeted by the programme, just as the BISP makes welfare payments to women. As exciting as the possibilities of the Waseela-e-Taleem progamme are, there is also reason to be wary. Governments have a habit of launching ambitious programmes amid much hype and then simply doing nothing about them. This initiative in particular, could face problems since it is meant to run for four years and with elections due within the next few months, we could have a new government that simply has different priorities than the current government.

To prevent such an outcome, we need all political parties to vow that they will continue to fund this programme if they happen to come into power. As worthy as this initiative is, it should also be seen as a stepping stone, not the endgame. Educating three million children is surely a worthy goal but even that will barely make a dent in our rate of illiteracy. Forcing all children to go to school and ensuring the schooling they are provided is of high quality are among the most basic tasks of government. Thankfully, they are now waking up to this responsibility, although it will require decades of work to rectify the mistakes of the last 65 years.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 12^th, 2012.