Right to Education: Where do we stand?

About five years ago it was a his­toric moment when Arti­cle 25‑A was incor­po­rat­ed in the Con­sti­tu­tion of Pak­istan through 18th Amend­ment which affirms that “the State shall pro­vide free and com­pul­so­ry edu­ca­tion to all chil­dren of the age of five to six­teen years in such man­ner as may be deter­mined by law”. Arti­cle 25‑A brought some hope to improve the grim sit­u­a­tion of edu­ca­tion in the coun­try which hosts the sec­ond largest num­ber of out of school chil­dren in the world after only Nige­ria. How­ev­er, today the state of edu­ca­tion in Pak­istan remains dis­mal. The 18th Amend­ment also devolved the sub­ject of edu­ca­tion from fed­er­al to provin­cial gov­ern­ments and now provinces have com­mand to for­mu­late their poli­cies regard­ing edu­ca­tion. Leg­is­la­tion for the right to edu­ca­tion has been passed in Sindh, Balochis­tan, Pun­jab and Islam­abad cap­i­tal ter­ri­to­ry. The province of Khy­ber Pakhtunkhawa (KP), how­ev­er, is still in process of draft­ing a bill.

After suc­cess­ful leg­is­la­tion at the fed­er­al lev­el, there have not been very pos­i­tive signs for the imple­men­ta­tion of the Act at provin­cial lev­el. The Pun­jab Free and Com­pul­so­ry Edu­ca­tion Act 2014 guar­an­tees that the pri­vate schools will pro­vide free edu­ca­tion to 10 per­cent stu­dents. But how will pri­vate schools ensure this and what will be the mech­a­nism or cri­te­ria of enroll­ment of those 10 per­cent stu­dents, espe­cial­ly in elite schools of urban areas? Though Punjab’s edu­ca­tion indi­ca­tors are bet­ter than oth­er provinces but still there are myr­i­ad chal­lenges of enroll­ment, reten­tion and qual­i­ty of edu­ca­tion. ‘About 17% chil­dren in Pun­jab have nev­er been to school. This ratio is much high­er in Sindh and KP where 37 per­cent and 25 per­cent chil­dren have nev­er been to school respec­tive­ly,’ accord­ing to a UNESCO Report on Edu­ca­tion in Pak­istan.

Although in the pre­vi­ous bud­get almost all the provinces have increased their edu­ca­tion bud­get but still Pak­istan is lag­ging behind in the field of edu­ca­tion both in terms of access and qual­i­ty of edu­ca­tion. The Annu­al Sta­tus of Edu­ca­tion Report (ASER 2014) shows the decline in the learn­ing lev­els of chil­dren by 5 per­cent in 2014. In the rur­al areas sur­vey which was car­ried out across the coun­try, only 46 per­cent chil­dren of class five can read sto­ry in Urdu, Sind­hi or Pash­to lan­guages which was 50 per­cent in 2013. Sim­i­lar­ly about 42 per­cent chil­dren of class 5 could read sen­tences in Eng­lish and 40 per­cent chil­dren could do two dig­it divi­sion in Math­e­mat­ics. In urban areas sit­u­a­tion is com­par­a­tive­ly bet­ter but not sat­is­fac­to­ry. In assess­ment of the qual­i­ty of learn­ing in Urdu, Eng­lish and Math­e­mat­ics, the ratio was 60%, 56% and 53% respec­tive­ly. The pri­vate schools have bet­ter per­for­mance in terms of learn­ing lev­els as com­pared to gov­ern­ment schools. On the oth­er hand 21 per­cent chil­dren between the ages of 5 to 16 years are out of school, the same pro­por­tion as that of 2013. Anoth­er impor­tant aspect which was noticed in the report was the grow­ing trend of paid pri­vate tuition, espe­cial­ly in pri­vate schools chil­dren of urban areas where 42 per­cent of sur­veyed stu­dents were tak­ing tuition after school hours. The report high­lights the pos­i­tive trend in teach­ers and stu­dents atten­dance where gov­ern­ment school teach­ers and stu­dents have almost equal ratio of atten­dance (about 90 %). The schools were lack­ing in a num­ber of essen­tial facil­i­ties and mul­ti grade teach­ing is also a trend observed in the find­ings.

In a recent brief­ing ses­sion with par­lia­men­tar­i­ans which was orga­nized by Pak­istan Coali­tion of Edu­ca­tion regard­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of the Pun­jab Free & Com­pul­so­ry Edu­ca­tion Act 2014, the School Edu­ca­tion Depart­men­t’s Deputy Sec­re­tary Bud­get and Finance, Mr. Qais­er Rashid admit­ted that there are almost 6,000 schools in Pun­jab where mul­ti grade teach­ing is being pro­vid­ed to stu­dents.

The major issues con­fronting the imple­men­ta­tion of free and uni­ver­sal edu­ca­tion include insuf­fi­cient bud­get allo­ca­tion, ram­pant cor­rup­tion, admin­is­tra­tive expen­di­tures, lack of trans­paren­cy, out­dat­ed cur­ricu­lum and last but not least the lack of polit­i­cal will to revamp the edu­ca­tion sec­tor. Edu­ca­tion sec­tor has nev­er been the top pri­or­i­ty of our suc­ces­sive regimes. As a result of this crim­i­nal neg­li­gence Pak­istan will not be able to meet the Mil­len­ni­um Devel­op­ment Goals (MDG’s) on edu­ca­tion by 2015. Pak­istan is hard­ly spend­ing 2 per­cent of GDP — Gross Domes­tic Prod­uct — on edu­ca­tion sec­tor which needs to be enhanced. The Glob­al Part­ner­ship for Edu­ca­tion orga­nized its Replen­ish­ment Pledg­ing Con­fer­ence in Brus­sels, on June 26, 2014 as part of its sec­ond replen­ish­ment cam­paign. The gov­ern­ment of Pak­istan has pledged the amount of worth 9,495 mil­lion dol­lar for edu­ca­tion sec­tor and aims to grad­u­al­ly increase the bud­get allo­ca­tions up to 4 per­cent of GDP by 2018.

The 18th Amend­ment has empow­ered the provin­cial gov­ern­ments for imple­ment­ing the right to edu­ca­tion in the coun­try. The provin­cial over­sight can improve the ser­vice deliv­ery and ensure trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty. It is high time to impose edu­ca­tion emer­gency in the coun­try on war foot­ing. It is the need of the hour to do some prac­ti­cal steps rather than sweep­ing dust under the car­pet. The state of Pak­istan must ful­fill its promise to enroll every child into school so that we could stand on equal foot­ing with the comi­ty of nations.