LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman’s adviser on education Dr Yasmin Rashid has said the Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (I-SAPS) study has revealed gruesome details of learning outcome of public schools’ students in Lahore that exposed Khadim-i-Aala’s education emergency in Punjab.

Dr Yasmin said the PTI would continue following up the performance of public schools in the province and compel the incumbent government to re-plan its policies to educate the masses so that they could take informed decisions and progress.

She said the study found that learning outcome of public schools’ students in Lahore was declining rapidly and the chief minister’s education emergency had turned out to be a lie. She said the key reason behind the poor outcome was misplaced priorities of the Sharif brothers.

She regretted that education was never a priority of the Sharif brothers and things had reached a shameful level as far as child education was concerned. She said Pakistan had been ranked as the second largest country in the world in terms of out-of-school children. She said the PML-N government had allocated just Rs71.5 billion for education, while for a single Metro train, it was ready to waste some Rs165 billion.

Punjab PTI Information Secretary Andleeb Abbas observed the PML-N government had itself confessed in the Pakistan Economic Survey 2014-15 that the literacy rate had gone down by two per cent. She said the I-SAPS reported that there were 127 schools operating in dangerous buildings, including 107 functioning in partially dangerous buildings but “Khadim-i-Aala” was totally indifferent to these figures as his only priority were flashy metro trains and carpeted roads.

She said the I-SAPS also stated that some 290,000 children in 5-16 year age group in Lahore were out of school that constituted 33 per cent of the school-age children, which was a moment of shame for the self-proclaimed “Khadim-i-Aala”.

Ms Abbas said the ruling elite did not want to invest in education because a literate Pakistan would become a big threat to its semi-literate ruling class.

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2015

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