Improving public sector education

Speaking at a function in connection with the Independence Day celebrations, Lahore Nazim, Mian Amir Mehmood, lamented the poor state of the education in the country.
As he pointed out, there are multiple school systems in this country, including the English medium private schools that offer quality education to children from privileged backgrounds, government-run schools whose standard of instruction is extremely poor, and the madrassahs, that, he correctly averred, teach what is more about promoting sectarianism than about Islamic teachings.
Both the quality of instruction and administrative conditions in public sector schools are so inferior that those in the lower income groups who can afford prefer to send their children to functional private schools.
The sad reality is that the State has abdicated its responsibility towards education. The budgetary allocations to this important field have remained at a dismally low level while the population has increased at a rapid rate. As a State Bank report released last April revealed, these allocations are 1.7 percent of the GDP - the lowest in South Asia. It has recommended that the spending on education be gradually increased to three percent of the GDP over the next three years. That though would still be below UNESCO's universally prescribed percentage of four percent.
The Bank report, which focussed on the basic education field, had also made the startling disclosure that what accounts for poor school attendance, contrary to the general belief, is not parental opposition to schooling of children, even girls, but the inability of the system to respond to the public expectations. When the quality is poor, teachers absent, and illiteracy persists despite schooling, it noted, the parents withdraw their children.
Going by the city Nazim's own admission, in Lahore district alone, there is a shortage of 2,000 teachers because, he said, the government does not have enough resources to pay the salaries of teachers. His preferred solution is to ask philanthropists to come forward and help poor students seek quality education. No doubt, philanthropy has a role to play in this field.
However, the primary responsibility for providing quality education to all rests squarely on the shoulders of the government. It is pertinent to point out here that even in the most advanced countries, where there is a great tradition of philanthropists spending huge amounts of money on setting up schools and universities, education remains a state obligation.
Governments devote a lot of attention and resources to ensure that their respective nations do not fall behind good examples in this important area.
In the absence of a sound public sector education system our government leaders' claims to put the country on the road to progress and development, ring hollow because there can be no meaningful progress unless and until the human resource is developed.
As it is, UNDP's Human Development Index for the year 2004, which among other factors, such as per capita income healthcare and life expectancy figures, uses education to measure human development, shows that Pakistan lags behind all the other South Asian countries.
The government must fulfil its duty towards improving public sector education. The budgetary allocations need to be increased in accordance with the UNESCO-prescribed standards.
The provincial governments must also think of new ways to raise funds for improving the public sector school system through measures such as levying a surcharge for education as a certain percentage of the property tax to be collected along with the property tax. Education, it hardly needs saying, must get the priority it deserves.