Educating everybody

Pakistan has been experiencing an education emergency for decades. For a country that aspires to create an economy that draws down the benefits of information technology and the internet, it has done remarkably little to produce a generation of children who might fill the jobs that such a move would create. With the education budget still below two per cent of the GDP, the government has decided that it too recognises that there is an education emergency and has decided to do something about it — maybe. It is appropriate to give a guarded welcome to the announcement by the federal ministry of education and professional training that there is to be an “education emergency till the inclusion of the last child in school”. There are about 25 million children between the ages of five and 16 years, who are out of school. Even if they are in school, the quality of their education is poor, and 85 per cent of those enrolled do not reach higher secondary level.

The plan is grand and envisions the enrollment of all out-of-school children, a long overdue revision of the curriculum and the development of community and basic education schools. Sweeping though the vision is, there is no time frame for any of these vital elements of reform, all of which are going to cost money. The prime minister announced in March 2014 that the education budget would be increased to four per cent of the GDP by 2018 — a year conveniently on the other side of the next general election. A sum of Rs188 billion is quoted as being dedicated to the enrollment of five to 16-year-olds, but again no time frame. The initiative is likely to be formally rolled out to coincide with the visit to Pakistan of Nobel laureate Malala Yousufzai next month — which may anyway be rescheduled as a consequence of the ongoing security crisis. This initiative ought to be widely welcomed, but there is a sense that ‘we have been here before’ and much the same set of revisions have been promised in the past, never to materialise.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 24^th, 2015.

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