The poor state of education

Education being the building block of social progress and sustainable development. Framers of the 1973 Constitution had placed an obligation on the State to provide free and compulsory education to all children of five to sixteen years of age. Yet all through these years education has remained least of governmental priorities. As the latest UNESCO "Global Education Monitoring Report" points out, Pakistan spends only 2.65 percent of its GDP on sector, 4 percent below the benchmark. The result is that as per official statistic released by the National Education Management Information System as many as 22.6 million children are out of school-a whopping 44 percent of the new generation, and hence lack basic skills for work. If that is not bad enough, those who do attend school the quality of education on offer leaves much to be desired.
Spotlighting some of the issues responsible for low quality learning outcomes, the report points out that 30 percent of the pupils are in private schools that have only one teacher for a class of 80. Which obviously means the teacher cannot give serious attention to each student, and the ones neglected lose interest and confidence, impelling many to drop out. A common tendency is blame the overall poor state of education in the private as well as public sector on the teachers. But as the report warns assigning disproportionate blame to any one actor for systemic weaknesses is unfair and unproductive. A major underlying problem is lack of accountability. Political interference and nepotism are rampant. Then there are teachers and schools that exist on paper only. The report also identifies low teacher salaries as a key cause of the prevailing state of affair. It serves as a disincentive for well-qualified individuals to adopting teaching as profession.
The fact remains that providing quality universal education is a governmental responsibility even in advanced countries, all the more so in a low-income country like Pakistan. Nonetheless, even within limited resources a lot can be done to raise the standards if the political will is there. In this respect the ENESCO report mentions the efforts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, noting that the requirement for all teachers to undergo assessment by the National Testing Services has increased transparency and meritocracy of the hiring process. Also praised is the use of biometric to monitor the attendance of over 210,000 staff in some 26,200 schools. It can only be hoped that all provincial governments will rise to the responsibility, and give education the priority it deserves, increasing financial allocations to the sector and also putting in place a framework for setting and monitoring targets.