Literacy rate and education emergency

Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training Dr. Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui has underlined the need to declare a nationwide education emergency to bring back out-of-school children. The minister expressed deep concern over the alarming number of out-of-school children and discussed suggestions with the high-ups of the Ministry of Education and Professional Training to achieve literacy goals of the country. The Education Minister aims to float the proposal to declare an education emergency in the upcoming cabinet meeting so extraordinary measures can be put in place to enroll out-of-school children without delay.

Education is the most important element in the overall national life of any nation. A modern and competitive education system is of utmost importance to impart state-of-the-art education to school and university students so they can compete with the current day challenges effectively. The private education industry has been groomed over the past years while the numbers of public schools and students in government education institutions decreased sharply because of a lack of resources and substandard teaching practices in state-run educational institutions. Pakistan faces an alarming situation in the education sector, wherein the literacy rate stands at 58% and nearly 28 million children are currently out of school, which forms almost 40 per cent under 18 children in the country. Pakistan’s education sector faces serious issues such as a lack of funds, policy lethargy, shortage of education facilities/ schools, social disparities, class-based education systems, low literacy rates, pedagogical conservatism, commercialization of the education sector, unskilled teaching staff, multiple mediums and diverse curriculum being taught in various schools systems and religious seminaries in the country.

Historically, the education sector has always been the least funded, poorly managed and largely ignored sector in the country, due to which Pakistan not only lags behind in literacy but is surpassed by the regional states in the field of Research and Development (R&D) and modern innovations. The newly appointed federal Minister floated the idea of educational emergency which is something of an exaggeration of the situation and distraction from the real issues. Pakistan education sector needs mass funding, and provision of essential infrastructure, availability of highly qualified teacher, conducive and politics free educational environment, provision of free of cost books, school uniform and removal of fees etc. along with a ban on child labour, a halt of gender discrimination and prosecution of parents if they fail to enrol their children in schools. So, each child boy and girl join the school and essentially obtain grade 12 education at all cost. This objective can easily be achieved through budgetary allocation and adoption of necessary legislation at an urgent basis.