ISLAMABAD, Aug 8: The People’s Rights Movement (PRM), a confederation of NGOs across the country, on Thursday held a meeting with the representatives of students and teachers organizations to discuss the privatization of schools and colleges and devise strategies to resist the process.

In attendance were members of the People’s Students Federation (PSF), Muslim Students Federation (MSF) and other student groups as well as representatives of the All-Pakistan Teachers and Professors Association.

It was also an opportunity for the participants to understand the linkages between the proposed privatization of education and the overall corporatization under way in the country, and indeed across the world.

Speaking on the occasion, PRM coordinator Aasim Sajjad Akhtar pointed out that the Karachi University Teachers Society (KUTS) had recently exposed the fact that the proposed reforms in higher education were driven by World Bank-Unesco proposals. The basic notion of privatization is that improving management and efficiency will improve quality. However, no attention is paid to the issue of affordability.

Students and teachers said that they too were in favour of improving the quality of education across the country. However, they added, privatization did not represent the appropriate response to the problem. Of primary importance is the fact that the share of GDP spent on education is only slightly more than one per cent of GDP. This reflects the importance that the state attributes to education. Pushing education into the private sector will not redress this allocative inadequacy, and will in fact make education even more inaccessible to ordinary Pakistanis, they observed.

Students and teachers both said that they were not against eliminating the problems within schools and colleges or ensuring that basic standards of discipline were applied. They agreed that the state of student and teacher organizations was quite poor. However, they added, it was impossible to imagine how teacher or student unions would be improved if schools and colleges were thrown into the private sector.

Many problems of students were highlighted. It was pointed out that quota systems had already been abolished for students from rural areas and other categories that benefited the poorer classes. However, the quota for children of army officers remains intact. Once schools and colleges are privatized, fees will be increased ten times over. At a time when the government has decided to make the graduation requirement necessary for participating in elections, it is unfathomable as to why education is being made inaccessible to common people.

It was agreed that PRM would mobilize support for various teachers and students organizations and ensure that the privatization process was halted.