Yesterday was the 50th International Literacy Day, being celebrated under this year's banner of 'Reading the Past, Writing the Future.' Fifty years ago today, UNESCO marked September 08 as a day to "actively mobilize the international community and to promote literacy as an instrument to empower individuals, communities, and societies," reads the UNESCO website. Following up on last year's column (and hopefully, in forming a tradition), BR Research would once again like to take this opportunity to have a dialogue on the state of education in Pakistan (credit to Alif Ailaan for all figures, unless elsewhere specified).
In 2015, Pakistan missed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) target of an 88 percent literacy rate. The literacy rate in Pakistan is currently 60 percent, and has been stagnant at that level for a while now. Since then, the MDGs were scrapped and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were ushered in, adopted by world leaders with targets set for 2030. Literacy is a part of SDG 4, which aims to "ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all." Incidentally, in about two weeks (September 25), it will have been the first year since these SDGs were adopted. So far, however, Pakistan doesn't have much to show for it.
Approximately 40 percent of Pakistan's population aged 10 years and older cannot read or write. Moreover, when we move from primary to secondary and tertiary levels, enrolment ratios decrease sharply. There is a lack of secondary and tertiary institutions that restricts the pursuit of education.
There are significant disparities in the literacy rate across gender and the urban-rural divide. The national literacy rate for males is 70 percent as opposed to 49 percent for women. The literacy rate in urban areas is 76 percent, compared to 51 percent in rural areas. This reflects that the female and the rural demographic are being excluded, their marginalization perpetuated for generations to come.
Pakistan has the world's second highest out-of-school population of children, second only to Nigeria. Regionally speaking, our 60-percent literacy rate is the second-lowest among all SAARC countries, after Afghanistan. Globally, this puts our rank at 139 out of 160 countries (in terms of literacy rate, as per UNESCO).
Pakistan experiences high pupil-teacher ratios - 40 at the primary level and 42 at the secondary level. The lack of teachers is complemented by their lack of training and absenteeism, and weak governance resulting in the poor quality of public schooling. Then, there's the quality of the schools themselves. Of all government primary schools, half function without electricity; one in three have no drinking water; and two in five have no toilets. There is a problem of space as well; around 17 percent of primary schools are single-classroom schools.
Finally, when all that is said and done, there is a lack of reliable data and next to no qualitative measures when it comes to the state of education. There is no way yet to monitor learning outcomes in Pakistan, the quality of education imparted, or the abilities of teachers. Literacy is loosely defined as the ability to read and write with understanding in any language, and that's about as qualitative as it gets.
The state's public sector expenditure on education is still barely 2 percent of GDP, in spite of the PML-N's promise of raising it to 4 percent by 2018. Education isn't on anyone's agenda, but for sustainable development and guaranteeing a bright future for the country and its youth, it must be given a higher priority. Education needs to be a louder part of the public dialogue, and days like the World Literacy Day are a reminder of exactly that.
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