10 October 2004	Sunday	24 Shaban 1425

ISLAMABAD, Oct 9: Insufficient budgetary allocations for education, lack of vision and strategic thinking at the policy level continue to keep the country from making any significant progress in education.

These views were expressed by the participants of a one-day conference entitled "Is Education Really For All in Pakistan" organised by Society for Protection of the Rights of the Child (Sparc) here on Saturday.

Representatives of United Nations, NGOs and civil society, and educationists from across the country spoke on the occasion.

They called upon the masses in general and policy-makers in particular to wake up from their 57 years of slumber and proceed towards the goal of 'education for all' that was remedy to all the ills of the country.

Anees Jillani, the Sparc national coordinator, said literacy rate in Pakistan was 50 per cent with female literacy almost half of the male literacy. In terms of literacy rate, he said, Pakistan touched the lowest in South Asia because more than 5.5 million children were at present out of school in the country.

The gender ratio in public and private sector schools was almost identical: about 60 per cent boys and 40 per cent girls. The majority of public sector enrolment was in the rural areas (70 per cent) with only 30 per cent students in the urban areas.

Unlike the urban areas, there was a wide gender disparity between boys and girls in the rural areas where enrolment of boys was 70 per cent compared to only 30 per cent for girls, he said.

The dropout rate after completion of public sector primary schooling was also high, Mr Jillani said. Some 73 per cent students were unable to get admissions to next level of schooling. Poverty and unavailability of high schools were primarily responsible for high dropout rate, he said.

He said the National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) was spending millions of rupees on advertisements in newspapers promoting the commission. He said the money should be spent on promotion of education. Mr Jillani said education should be decentralized and not made a subject of federal government. "It has been successful in other countries then why not in Pakistan?"

Shaheen Attiqur Rehman, former Punjab minister for social welfare, asked every single individual and institution to create awareness among the masses about the value of education and mobilise them for reforming the existing deteriorated education sector.

Resident Representative Friedrich Nauman Stiftung, Peter Andreas Bochmann, suggested that some of the army budget should be spent on education.

"In the time of enlightenment, of globalisation, of collaboration in South Asia, I don't see the necessity of retaining such a big army with very expensive nuclear weapons.

When I look around, I can't see real enemies among the neighbours of Pakistan," he said.

He suggested a minimum 50 per cent reduction in army expenditure for a period of 20 years and the spending of that amount on education. He said he did not believe that companies and institutions run by army could be very efficient. Only the private sector was able to run companies efficiently, he said. Because, the army was a public institution and not a private one and its staff was not used to the use of money in an efficient way.

He also discussed the class system in Pakistani system of education and said the public schools had a very bad image owing to which the parents sent their children to private schools.

Janis Bjorn Kanavin, ambassador of Norway, said the governments and donors should set specific targets for increasing the ratio of education during certain periods by investing in human resources. Schools must be fair and clean of corruption as well as the private industry must provide the right content and contribute to the children's outlook for the future, he said.