Importance of spending more on education highlighted

The government has underlined the importance of spending more on education to become a nation of highly skilled, productive and innovative people to meet the Vision 2030.
An approach paper of the Planning Commission on strategic direction to achieve the vision stressed for a major increase in public expenditure to enhance the scale and quality of education in general and the scale and quality of scientific and technical education in particular.
The paper highlights that the present expenditure of 2.6 percent of the GDP is still lower than the minimum of 4.0 percent recommended by the Unesco. The one result of low investment and skewed priorities is missing or inadequate infrastructure and teachers which just do not allow the students at the secondary and higher secondary levels to acquire either insight or skilled competence for most jobs.
The education is by far the most important issue to be addressed in the Vision 2030 plan. Pakistan faces a tremendous challenge in developing a system of delivery of quality education at all levels.
The issue of language of education must be addressed. English is, and will remain extremely important, but will be a foreign language in Pakistan. While its importance cannot be denied, fundamental progress in basic and technical education may only be possible by giving due important to Urdu.
The paper underlined a completely new system of technical education without which no industrial development in Pakistan can take place. A complete system for quality assurance in the delivery of "international standard" education at all levels must be implemented.
The government admits that the enrolment is steadily shifting towards private institutions on the premise that they provide better education, even though this may not be necessarily true. Share of total enrolment in private schools has reached 30 percent at the primary, 23 percent at secondary and 64 percent at higher secondary levels. Both kinds of schools are, however, deficient in key facilities.
Moreover, it says that barring some notable exceptions, the state of private universities is highly unsatisfactory. Higher education has suffered equally in the past, with tertiary enrolments (percent of population compared to 10.5 percent in India and 28.2 percent in Malaysia.
The situation has now been reversed and the higher education sector is receiving significant additional funds to ensure adequate provision of high quality education that is relevant and important for the future development of Pakistan. It is necessary to ensure continued increase in funding until one percent of the GNP is devoted to this sector.
Development of a system of quality assurance that focuses on the processes for the provision of quality education in our educational institutions is key to the development of world-class academic institutions.