Education sector role depressing

The state of affairs in the education sector are dismally disheartening, as non-opaque and cumbersome procedures, formal as well as informal, have allowed the power abuse to flourish. The poor policy-making coupled with non-utilisation of the budgetary allocations is hindering development in education sector, said Dr Suleman Hamayun, executive director, I-SAPS during a policy dialogue here on Tuesday.
The dialogue was organised by Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (I-SAPS) in co-ordination with the Campaign for Quality Education (CQE). Abbas Rashid, a representative of CQE, Dr Pervez Tahir, professor of Economics, GCU Lahore; Muhhamad Sabbi, principal economist of SPDC, and Dr Fayyaz Ahmed, joint educational advisor, education ministry, were among the main participants.
Education has received comparatively greater attention over the last eight years, partly as a result of realisation within the government and civil society that we will not be able to achieve minimum objectives in this critical sector if proper access and quality education is not provided. Dr Suleman said that total public sector spending on education Rs 258 billion while the private sector is spending Rs 36 billion. Similarly, the donors are contributing Rs 2.4 billion. "Girls on average obtain 1.3 years of formal schooling while the average for boys is 3.8 years", he stressed.
He said that if we review the National Education Policy, it is obvious that for 100 percent primary enrolment in next two years, it would cost Rs 73 billion.
"Keeping it in view, the Education Sector Reforms (ESR) package was prepared at a cost of Rs 55.5 billion while its budgetary allocation was Rs 9 billion, but it has been found that only Rs 6.5 billion was spent up till now", he added.
The budgeted fiscal deficit (2006-07) is 4.2 percent coupled with high inflation, so the government is finding it difficult to manage resources to strike a balance between the expenditure and income.
Abbas Rashid said that the provincial co-ordination in making any policy or preparing budget is necessary. "Education is a provincial matter, but the provinces usually are not being consulted while formulating budgetary proposals", he said.
Dr Pervaiz said that the total spending on education in 2006-07 was Rs 162 billion while this contribution as per GDP is 1.86 percent and as per budget 9.67 percent. "During 1990s, the average allocation of the education sector budget as per GDP was 2.26 percent but in 2000s it decreased 1.67 percent ", he stated.
He said: "Medium-Term Development Framework planned development outlay for 2006-07 as Rs 14.3 billion, but the HEC spent Rs 10 billion whereas just Rs 4 billion was provided to the education ministry". Quality of planning and budgeting is unsatisfactory in the country while the agencies lack space and flexibility to formulate a more vibrant policy.
Dr Fayyaz said that most of the institutions created for development of education have become idle. "Provincial finance departments keep the money allocated in the budget along with them for 3-4 years instead of releasing it to the departments concerned", he noted.
He said there is no budget allocation for text-books. "Establishment of cadet colleges in the provinces does not serve the purpose as we need to have some allocations for examination and management training coupled with proper utilisation of the funds", he added.
He said that our financial year is divided in four quarters; in first quarter usually the finance ministry does not release the funds. "Often we get the funds in second quarter, that delays the development process and our projects start late", he said.
The other participants pointed out the persistent inadequacy of the education budget that is reflected in under investment, absence of policy levers to determine resource allocation, incremental budgeting detached from the Education Management Information Systems (EMIS) and other available data. Missing budget lines, delay in disbursement, poor spending capacities at the federal, provincial and district levels, and lack of transparency aggravate the crisis.
So, on the one hand, Pakistan continues to be counted among the countries with the lowest public expenditure as a percentage of GDP and total public spending. On the other, it lacks the capacity to spend what is available.
Available evidence suggests that Pakistan lags behind many countries in terms of key indicators such as literacy rate, enrolment, dropout rates, gender equality in educational attainment, etc.
Although the relevance of public spending patterns to educational outcomes is widely recognised, there remains a deficit of public deliberations on these issues. This is reflected in the absence of informed policy debate on solving the problem of allocation, spending, and tracking associated with the overall budgetary processes.
According to some estimates, there exist more than 30,000 ghost schools in Pakistan. These are the institutions, which draw money from the public kitty but they exist only in official documents.
Today there are 22,755 schools (16.75 percent) without shelter, 61,383 (39 percent) without drinking water, 96,708 (62 percent) without electricity, 76,312 (49 percent) without toilets and 71,681 (46 percent) without boundary walls in the country.