EDITORIAL: It was with great fanfare on Monday that the federal Education Minister Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui launched the “National Education Policy Development Framework” at the Pakistan Institute of Education – a ministry subsidiary — in the presence of representatives of provinces and Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
In his keynote speech, the minister described the new framework as a vital necessity, and called for prioritising education of the youth in engineering, mathematics, information technology and artificial intelligence, adding the right words “ignoring reality or avoiding the truth will not bring any meaningful progress.”
For his part, the education secretary iterated the shocking statistics that Pakistan’s literacy rate is only 62 percent – that too is an exaggeration considering that many of those counted as literate can barely write their own names — while 26 million children are out of school. He also talked of severe deficits in provision of fundamental skills, raising hopes of change for the better as he claimed that the framework was developed in consultation with experts and representatives of provincial governments.
However, from the details that have appeared in press reports the framework offers little by way of something different to anything that has not been said or done before except, perhaps, for that it is a first time that the extent of those left ignored has been quantified. According to the policy document, not more than 5 percent of children are receiving good quality education.
Moreover, only 12 percent of children in the eligible age group have access to higher education. As an unsurprising but disturbing consequence Pakistan ranks at 164th place out of 193 countries on the Human Development Index (HDI). The document goes on to state that the higher education sector faces several problems that hinder its ability to deliver high quality education, perform cutting edge research, and contribute effectively to socio-economic development of the country.
There is a critical need to enhance the quality of teaching, improve learning outcomes, and ensure that research output meet global benchmarks, emphasises the policy framework. Another key need is increasing access to higher education. Important as all these assertions are, there is nothing new about them.
All these issues have repeatedly been identified by relevant experts as well as concerned civil society groups. In fact, anyone with even a casual interest knows education is a great equaliser of people and the building block of national progress and prosperity. Unfortunately, Pakistan lags behind all other South Asian countries on this score.
The challenge is how to address these decisive deficiencies. The policy framework was expected to suggest the way forward. All it has to say on this crucial question is that the global landscape demands a deeper analysis – by whom? — of the needs.
Besides, a quality assurance framework should be streamlined based on ground realities so as to be implemented effectively. In the end, the event in Islamabad trumpeted as a big deal sounds like doing something for the sake of justifying duplication of a responsibility which in the first place is for the provinces — post the 18th Amendment — to take care of.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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