THAT basic (10-odd years) education has been declared a fundamental right of children and the fact that it is also considered a basic right in many countries and jurisdictions is not enough to convince a number of people here that all children should be educated.

All children irrespective of their family income, gender, religion, geography, ability, etc have the right to education. Not only that, in most countries, education is considered mandatory. Even if a child or her family do not desire that the child be educated, she can be ‘forced’ to be educated. The public good element and positive externalities have made education in most jurisdictions obligatory. An educated child contributes more to society at large than an uneducated child. It is as simple as that.

In the case of Pakistan, here is how the ‘right’ to education is worded in our Constitution. “Article 25-A: Right to Education: The state shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to sixteen years in such manner as may be determined by law.” Article 25-A was inserted in the Constitution as part of the 18th Constitutional Amendment in 2010. It is in the fundamental rights section of the Constitution. It is important to highlight how the Article is worded, ie “free and compulsory”. The ‘compulsory’ part articulates that it is obligatory.

And yet there are people in Pakistan who feel that we should not or cannot afford to educate all our children. They clearly do not understand what the notion of a ‘right’ is. Fundamental rights are supposed to be trump cards: their provision has to trump all other considerations. If you are calling for 10 years of education to be a fundamental right for all children, this provision has to trump all other considerations that do not invoke other fundamental rights. This should be enough reason to provide education to all children. But, it seems, rights mean little in our country. So, let us look at further considerations.

When developed nations decided to invest in education they weren’t as rich as they are today.

Unemployment, amongst the educated youth, is high. It tends to be high in countries where the economic growth rate and job creation rate are not high enough. In these countries, the rate at which jobs are created, compared to the rate of entry of young people into the labour force, is lower and this creates a situation of excess supply. But, how can this be a reason for denying the right to education? Growth rates change a lot even over the short to medium run while the provision of education takes place over decades, that is, you cannot start/stop education systems on the basis of short- to medium-term considerations.

Educated people drive both innovation and growth; they come up with new ideas and new ways of organising and delivering services. Education has large positive externalities on the sociopolitical front as well — in terms of reduction in fertility and population growth, health and education benefits for families of educated mothers, female empowerment and labour force participation, age of marriage, and the working of democracy in a country. Even if the rights argument is not considered strong enough, how can all of these benefits be sacrificed at the altar of growth rate and unemployment rate fluctuations?

View this problem from the other side as well. Imagine we do not educate our young. Pakistan is a young country that is still going through a demographic transition. Can we afford to have millions of uneducated youth to look after? Education opens up avenues for people for individual and family transformations. Can we afford to not offer this opportunity to all of our children? What will Pakistan’s future be if we have millions of uneducated youth who we need to cater for? Daron Acemoglu, professor of economics at MIT, in a recent lecture pointed out that the way the labour markets are changing, due to technology change, countries with large populations of uneducated youth are going to face very difficult economic, and consequently social and political, circumstances. Does that look more promising than trying to educate all children and the challenge of unemployment for the educated?

Another major argument for denying the right to education to all is based on the idea of limited financial resources. It is argued that Pakistan does not have the financial resources to educate every child. We only raise 10-odd per cent of our GDP as taxes and given the needs in other areas, we cannot afford to spend 5pc to 6pc of GDP on education alone. Even the current 2pc of GDP that we spend on education is with great difficulty and hardship.

It is true that financial resources are tight. Do bear in mind, though, that they are and have been tight for all countries across time. But others have made different choices. When the developed countries of today decided to invest in the education of their citizens, they were not as rich as they are today. Look at the history of mass education in the UK or Europe, the US and even Japan. All of them decided to go for mass education, for a variety of reasons, at a time when they were also struggling financially. But education, for all, was considered important to a) produce better labour, b) not fall behind other nations, c) craft a notion of citizenship, etc.

Even over the last few decades we have seen developing countries make choices for education that have been different from the choices made by Pakistan. India, China, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka provide interesting examples even from our region. Are these not resource-constrained countries?

It is hard to believe that even today we are still debating whether or not the right to education should be extended to all children in Pakistan and there are still people who think that we should not and that we cannot afford to. I guess this reflects quite vividly the country’s political economy issues. The rights of all are trumped by the needs of the elites — a pattern that is also reflected in many other decisions of the state.

The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives, and an associate professor of economics at Lums.

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2021