Pakistan is currently confronted with the challenges of out-of-school children and lack of standard curriculum and increasing number of unemployed PhD degree holders is one of its examples. This was stated by Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training, Shafqat Mahmood while addressing at the launch of 'Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report 2019' here on Thursday.
The UNESCO Islamabad Office in collaboration with the UNHCR hosted the launching ceremony, which was attended by a range of stakeholders from education sector, development partners, the media and civil society organisations. The theme of this year's GEM report is 'Migration, Displacement and Education: Building Bridges, not Walls.'
The minister further said that the government is planning a roadmap for education and would unveil it in next few days. "We are going to focus on four areas including bringing out-of-school children to schools; to constitute single national curriculum; improvement of quality of education; and developing the skills of young people."
"These four priorities are part of our objectives and in the next few days we would be unveiling them," he said, adding that particular programme would also be unveiled in the federal capital for out-of-school children.
He further said that the report is an important contribution of the UNESCO for a broader understanding of migration and displacement issues, both national and global ones and their impacts on education.
The education minister further said that the government of Pakistan has instituted a well-coordinated mechanism for the return of the temporarily dislocated people in the country and most of them have returned to their native areas.
Highlighting the government's education sector reforms, he said that a task force on education has been formed to propose concrete solutions to the problems of out-of-school children, uniformity in education, quality education and skills development.
The third in the series, the GEM report provides its assessment of the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG-4) and its targets. The 2019 Report elucidates the relationship among migration, displacement and education and presents evidence on the scale and characteristics of different types of migration and displacement and their implications on education and vice versa.
While education opportunities often serve as a major driver in the decision to migrate, the complex process of migration or displacement can also interrupt education.
Pakistan is hosting 1.4 million registered Afghanistan refugees. The constitutional amendment in 2010 guarantees the right to free, compulsory education for all children aged 5 to 16. Most of registered refugee children have access to both formal and non-formal education facilities in the country. Special provisions are also available for students in professional colleges and universities. Yet there are issues in access and quality of education for refugee children, especially girls, which are being addressed by the federal and provincial government authorities.
According to the report, the primary net enrolment rate of Afghan refugee girls in Pakistan was half that of boys and less than half the primary attendance rate for girls in Afghanistan. Forty years on, Afghan refugees do not receive adequate education in Pakistan.
According to the report, access to education for refugees, especially girls, is extremely low. A 2011 survey identifying refugee status put the Afghan refugee primary net enrolment rate at 29 percent, less than half the national rate in Pakistan of 71 percent. The primary net enrolment rate for refugee girls (18pc) was not only half the rate for boys (39pc) but even less than half the primary attendance rate for girls in Afghanistan in the same year. Only 5 percent of Afghan refugees attended secondary school.
A legacy of girls' low education access is an 8 percent literacy rate among female refugees, compared with 33 percent among Afghan refugees overall in Pakistan and Pakistan's national average of 57 percent. A vicious circle arises: socio-cultural traditions demand that adolescent girls can be taught only by women, but there are very few female teachers.
More recent mechanisms that identify and evaluate disability in displacement may provide suitable models for organisations seeking to improve inclusion. Systematic, functionality-based questions, such as those developed by the Washington Group on Disability Statistics, increasingly serve as a global standard.
The abovementioned survey in Pakistan provides insight into access to education and literacy by type of functional difficulty. Those with difficulty in seeing were most likely to attend school (52pc), while those with self-care difficulties were the least likely (7.5pc). In between were those with difficulty speaking (31%) or walking (27pc), trauma-originating depression or confusion (23pc) and cognitive difficulties (21pc).
Women can lead such education initiatives. For 20 years, the women's organisation Pakistan Initiative for Mothers and Newborns in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa taught mediation and conflict transformation skills to 35,000 youth and 2,000 women (Women without Borders, 2010). By contrast, approaches that focus on women only as mothers and wives might lead to seeing women as responsible if children or husbands become radicalised.
Among the top 10 countries hosting refugees, only one, Bangladesh, has so far excluded them from its national education system, while another Pakistan, has had an ambivalent stance. But even there, one of the provinces, Balochistan, includes refugees in its education plan.
During the presentation of the key findings of the 2019 GEM report, UNESCO Representative to Pakistan, Vibeke Jensen highlighted that the report is an essential reference for policymakers to understand both the positive and negative effects of migration and displacement on education systems. She highlighted the importance of a cross-sectoral coordination and planning mechanism to meet the challenges of financing education for migrants and refugees. The report calls on governments to address the education needs of migrants and displaced populations with the same attention they give to host population by protecting their rights, making national systems more inclusive and building institutional capacity for the same.
UNHCR Representative in Pakistan, Ruvendrini Menikdiwela appreciated the government's efforts to provide refugee children with access to education through inclusion in the government schools. She said that 40 percent of Afghan refugee children are attending Pakistani schools.
"Amid its internal education challenges, Pakistan has maintained its generous education policy for refugees which are indeed a great investment in peace, prosperity and sustainable development in both Afghanistan and Pakistan," Menikdiwela said.
Menikdiwela went on to say that the generous education policy is a reflection of Pakistan's commitment to support the Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG-4) and the law in Pakistan Article 25-A which stipulates free and compulsory education for all children.
Menikdiwela said through the Refugee Affected and Hosting Areas (RAHA) programme, the UNHCR is improving the existing educational facilities close to refugee villages to benefit both local and refugee communities.
Menikdiwela called upon the provincial governments to include refugees in the education sector plans to ensure that refugee children's needs are incorporated in the planning and budgeting process.
UN Resident Coordinator, Neil Buhne said that the report provides valuable insights in order to inform policymakers of different approaches to address migration and displacement issues being used in different contexts, their benefits and disadvantages. He emphasised the need to ensure its maximum use particularly for upstream policy and research related work in Pakistan.
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