IT has been four years since the 18th Constitutional Amendment was passed. Article 25A, ‘Right to Education’, was part of the 18th Amendment. It states: “The state shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to 16 years in such manner as may be determined by law.” Four years later, by most estimates, more than 20 million children between five and 16 years remain out of school. About six million of these are primary school-aged children.

Islamabad Capital Territory and Sindh have passed the requisite law for making the implementation of 25A possible. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab have draft laws only. Even in ICT and Sindh there has been limited or no progress on implementation. Though much has been made of the ‘education emergency’ and similar campaigns, government spending on education remains more or less flat.

If it was not for the substantial expansion in the provision of private education, especially in urban areas and large parts of Punjab and KP, the situation would look substantially poorer. By some estimates, 45pc to 50pc of enrolled children in Punjab now go to private schools.

We are not going to meet our education-related MDG targets. The prime minister recently promised a rise in spending on education to about 4pc of GDP by the end of his current term, reiterating something that is a part of the promise that the PML-N made in its election manifesto. Such pledges are not new. Even if the increase in educational spending does happen, and this is a big ‘if’ given the financial constraints the government is working under, this is still not going to be enough to ensure that all children between five to 16 years are in school and getting at least a minimally acceptable quality of education.

Expansion in the private provision of education is not going to solve the problem either. Without quibbling about the exact numbers on poverty, if 30pc to 40pc of households are poor in Pakistan, and if the cost of a minimally acceptable quality of education is Rs700 per student per month, society will need to find resources for getting poor children educated as their parents will not be able to afford this. So, private provision will not work in this sector. We need to find direct and indirect ways of subsidising the education of children of almost 50pc of households in the country.

Too many people, especially in policy circles, separate the issue of access to schools from quality of educational provision. They prioritise access and hold that the focus should first be on getting all children in schools and then worry about quality.

This is clearly wrong. First, if quality is poor, why should parents send their children to schools? Even if we are able to get all children to schools, we will not be able to keep them there. They will and should drop out. It is a waste of time and resources. Punjab should be wary of this given their recent enrolment drives. Second, this lexicographic ordering of access over quality binds us to current ways of provision of education and does not allow any room for innovation. We need to question this mode of thinking.

If the technology and organisational system of teaching remains the same as now, with children coming to designated school buildings, having particular student-teacher ratios, and certain standards for provision of infrastructure and teaching quality, the cost of provision is not going to alter much.

In this case even 4pc of our GDP is not going to be enough to fund “free and compulsory” education for all. This does not mean we do not need to increase the outlay. We do. But we have to be aware that while this might be a necessary condition for moving in the right direction, it might not be a sufficient condition.

What all this tells us is that we urgently need to think out of the box about how things are done currently, how we should be organising and providing for the education of all our children.

What role could new technologies play here? Internet, tablets, computers, mobiles, video and audio mediums, distance learning? Can any of these help? Can they reduce costs per unit, increase access, improve monitoring, evaluation and assessments, allow pedagogical/learning standardisation? Can they also ensure innovation and diversity in class to suit the circumstances of the learners? Can they facilitate the inclusion of groups and individuals who are marginalised currently? We need very serious thinking and experimentation here.

Can a computer in a hole at a street corner replace the school, the teacher, classroom experience and learning and classroom-based peer interaction? Clearly not. And this is not being argued here. But can videos, like the Khan Academy ones, improve teacher and student learning, can computers increase access to reference and reading material, can they assist in assessments and monitoring? Clearly yes. Can they reduce the cost of provision of quality education? We need to find out.

If we do not, the promise of 25A might remain just that — a promise — and governments will continue to drag their feet as they have been doing over the last four years. Maybe it is time for various education-related stakeholders to come together to focus on issues of innovation.

The writer is senior adviser, Pakistan, at Open Society Foundations, associate professor of economics, LUMS, and a visiting fellow at IDEAS, Lahore.