IN return for a commitment that Pakistan would double its education budget in three years, American first lady Michelle Obama announced at a recent White House event, to which the prime minister’s daughter Maryam Nawaz Sharif was invited, a $70 million contribution towards the goal of educating adolescent girls in Pakistan.

Accepting the dollars is the easy part. But now comes the hard part: delivering on that commitment. If the event ‘Let Girls Learn’ was nothing more than a photo op and a public relations stunt, accompanied by the announcement of funds, then the matter ends there. But if we are serious about the commitment the Pakistani government has apparently made, there are a few things that must be borne in mind.

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This is not the first time such a pledge has been given. Two years ago, the planning minister Ahsan Iqbal gave the same commitment, saying the government intends to double the education budget in five years.

A few months earlier, the minister of state for education had said the same thing. Two years later, very little progress on this goal is visible. The provincial governments too have repeatedly given commitments that they will double the education budget, but to this day there has been no real forward movement.

Back in 2012, the KP government, for example, committed itself to doubling its education budget in one year, and for at least two years before this education allocations were enhanced by more than 40pc each year. But allocations hit a plateau since when the education budget increased by a meagre 31pc in the full three years subsequently.

The example of the provincial and federal governments shows that there is a strong verbal commitment to increasing education expenditures, but a real gap in actually delivering on the pledge.

It is important to ask here — when Ms Sharif is all smiles at Ms Obama’s promise of funds for a small project to increase access to education for girls in return for yet another commitment — how this latest pledge is different from the numerous similar ones given in the past.

Does the government have a plan for bringing about these increases, in coordination with the provincial governments who actually control most of the country’s spending on education? At the moment, the answer appears to be ‘no’, but we can still hope that in the months and years to come we will discover otherwise.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2015

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