December 01, 2007	Saturday	Ziqa’ad 20, 1428

RAWALPINDI, Nov 30: Pakistan is far from achieving the goal of “Education for All”, and has been placed at low EFA Development Index (EDI) with less than 0.80 score, according to the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2008.

Pakistan’s placement at lower EDI category has been attributed to low primary school participation, adult illiteracy, gender disparities and inequalities in education and poor quality of education, says the report released by UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco).

While gender disparities in pre-primary education are much less marked than at other levels of education, the need to enroll more girls remains a concern in Pakistan, says the report calling upon the governments to act upon the challenges of rapid urbanisation and the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the demands of knowledge societies. “Any failure to deliver on these obligations breaches our commitment to universal basic education,” says the head of Unesco.

The report notes that since significant gender disparities in access continue to affect girls in Pakistan where gender parity index (GPI) stands at 0.81 per cent, girls were also more likely to reach the last grade of primary education than boys. Gender disparities are more prevalent at secondary than at primary level in most countries, with disparities favouring boys in Afghanistan, India, Iran, Nepal and Pakistan, the report says.

While the share of public education expenditure in national income increased in many regional countries, it declined in Pakistan. The priority on education in government expenditure was relatively low in 2005 throughout the region, with education’s share of total government expenditure below 15 per cent in two- thirds of the countries. By contrast the share was more modest in Pakistan with 11 per cent, the report notes.

The Unesco report pointed out that Pakistan had low chance of achieving universal primary education (UPE) goal by 2015. Though it is moving towards the goal with rapid progress, it needs to accelerate the speed. Pakistan is also at serious risk of not achieving the target of adult literacy target by 2015, though moving towards the goal, progress was too slow, while gender parity goal was at risk of not being achieved in 2015 and 2025.

The interaction between the child and the teacher is the key determinant of the quality of education. The regional average number of pupil per pre-primary teacher is forty, well above the average pre-primary pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) of 28:1 for all developing countries. However the situation for Pakistan is particularly challenging which had pre-primary PTR of 41:1 in 2005. In the coming decade, the primary school-age population is expected to continue to increase substantially and it is expected to grow by 11 per cent in Pakistan.

Although the region recorded some 17 million out-of-school children in 2005, this represented a dramatic decline from 31 million in 1999. The share of girls shrank slightly but remained the world’s highest at 66 per cent. India and Pakistan accounted for about three-quarters of the region’s out-of-school children.