ADVERSELY impacting the poor, Pakistan’s state of public education is nothing short of a national crisis. The results of decades of neglect towards education investment are aptly illustrated in Alif Ailaan’s report Pakistan District Education Rankings, 2016. For its fourth edition, the advocacy group tracked the performance of 151 districts in the country, only to find a decrease in overall education quality and infrastructure. Alarmingly, 81pc of all government schools operate as primary schools (that is 124,070 primary schools) and the remaining as middle, higher or higher secondary schools.These figures indicate that the state can provide only one in five children with an opportunity to continue his or her schooling. This is a violation of constitutional rights — under Article 24-A, the state is responsible for educating each child up to the age of 16.This crisis will cause Pakistan to miss the SDG of inclusive and equitable education, just as the country failed to meet the MDGs.

Using education (enrolment, retention, learning, gender parity) and infrastructure (facilities) markers, Alif Ailaan found scores of one-room primary schools employing lowly trained teachers; this resulted in high drop-out rates — 41pc of all primary schoolchildren dropped out of school, whereas 43pc (aged 15 and above) had never attended. Meanwhile, politicians have made negligible efforts to improve education in their respective constituencies.Why have there been no enrolment drives? Why is there no evidence of efforts to improve school infrastructure and the quality of teaching? What is being done to increase the number of secondary schools? These are key questions the politicians must be made to answer. While there are some signs of hope, eg the KP report card shows that the province is doing better since 2015 on enrolment and gender parity, despite a drop-out rate of 35pc, there is vast ground to be covered before schools in the country can truly function as institutes of learning. For starters, the state can address the infrastructure problem: the report indicates that around 48pc of schools have no toilets, boundary walls, electricity or drinking water; hence, the use of school management funds must be probed. This is necessary as matters will not improve unless it is ascertained how effectively and transparently education budgets are spent. And as long as the government does not fulfil pledges of spending at least 4pc of GDP on education, an unschooled, disillusioned young generation will have dire implications for the future.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2016