The education advisor for Save the Children has recently sensitized the Pakistani rulers that nearly 3 million students are out of school as the recent floods have destroyed 30,000 schools across the country, which merits leaders’ attention, necessary funds and public participation.
The education sector is the most neglected, least invested and poorly managed arena of Pakistan’s economy. Pakistan annually spends below 2% of GDP on education and related activities both at the federal as well as provincial levels, while the government share in the education sector gradually shrinks and the private education industry rapidly grows in the country.
Although government leaders claim to attain a 62.3% literacy rate, however, that has no real impact on the national economy because of low-quality education, exaggeration of figures, mismanagement and conflicting policies of the successive governments in the country. Previously, the government failed to construct thousands of public schools in KP and Azad Kashmir that collapsed in the 2005 earthquake.
The recent floods ruined thousands of public schools across the nation pushing millions of poor children out of alma maters. The World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Index has ranked Pakistan in the health and education sector at 129th position out of 138 countries in the world. This number is far fewer compared to other nations in the region and depicts an alarming situation in the education sector which is crucial in nation-building and economic growth of the country.
Literacy has a fundamental role in socio-economic uplift, character building as well as political and structural growth of any nation. Growing illiteracy creates a vicious cycle of problems and acts as a root cause of a majority of social and economic evils.
As of now, a bulk of the country’s issues including poverty, unemployment, overpopulation, rising inflation, housing and infrastructure, baradari politics, poor health care and bad governance, lawlessness, religious intolerance, corruption, crime and extremism all are outcomes of illiteracy, polarized and sub-standard education that had shaped our generations in diverse ethnicities, and divided communities instead of transforming them into a unified and single nation. At the same time, this curse adversely affects democracy, promotes the status quo and obstructs forces of change, modern development and innovations
Pakistan’s education sector faces multiple challenges ranging from insufficient funding to non-availability of qualified teachers, the non-existence of a unified curriculum, and the use of substandard teaching practices, together with corruption of bureaucracy and parents’ misperception about children’s education that continuously add to country’s woes by producing illiterate and unskilled generation instead of raising well-groomed children who play a role in the uplift of the country.
The current situation merits an education emergency along with massive funding by the government and International donor agencies are necessary to construct essential infrastructure, recruit and train talented teachers and admission of all children over 5 years of age. So, a nationwide crusade could be launched against the evil of illiteracy, ignorance and poverty that ultimately leads our nation toward literacy, economic growth and prosperity in the days to come.
