Reforming school education

Article 25-A of the Constitution stipulates that "the State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to sixteen years ..." Yet education in this country - a low priority for successive governments - has remained grossly under-funded. Predictably, speakers at a recent pre-budget dialogue in Peshawar on "Effective Education Financing: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Budget 2023-24" emphasised the need for enhanced allocation in the next KP budget.
Although during the current fiscal, the outgoing provincial government did allocate Rs 22 million extra to school education, it falls far short of funds required even for the provision of missing facilities and upgradation of infrastructure in the existing public sector educational institutions.
As per figures quoted by Executive Director of the Institute of Social and Policy Sciences at the dialogue, 51 percent of the existing schools in KP are without electricity, 29 percent lack latrines, 37 percent have no drinking water, and 34 percent are devoid of boundary walls. Consequently, the rate of student enrolment is dismal. Add to these missing facilities an unspecified number of 'ghost schools' from which both teachers and pupils are missing as well as several school structures destroyed by the militants, and the goal of free universal education looks like an unrealisable dream or the foreseeable future.
The problem though is not only that there are not enough schools or that they are badly managed, the quality of instruction offered by the existing ones in all the provinces is anything but satisfactory. The teachers lack proper training. The courses are designed to discourage independent thinking. Instead of learning through proper understanding, rote learning is promoted. It is worthwhile to recall here a policy dialogue hosted by the Punjab Education Department, where participants noted with concern the provincial Examination Commission's report for class V to VII results. The report showed student performance was worse in mathematics and worst in science-the two building blocks of technological progress and economic development. The reason, it turned out, was that the teachers hired to impart instruction in the two subjects themselves had no grounding in these disciplines. It was decided to induct subject specialists for future teaching of science, mathematics and English.
A positive development in the present dismal scenario is a growing, though slow, realisation that the situation is unacceptable and reform is necessary. The autonomy the provinces enjoy following the passage of the 18th Amendment has created a healthy competition among them to popularise education and improve standards. Some of the schemes initiated by Punjab have been replicated by KP. It is hoped the new elected provincial governments would give a more focused attention to the sector. Aside from making substantial increases in budgetary allocations they must also update the content of syllabi to promote rational thinking, and raise the quality of instruction.