ISLAMABAD, Dec 1: Pakistan is on the right track to meet all six goals of Education for All (EFA), but is lagging behind in achieving higher literacy rate by 2015, Unesco representative Ingeborg Breines said here on Monday.
Quoting EFA Global Monitoring Report 2002, ‘Education for All: Is the World on Track’, Ms Breines said the report which was formulated by researchers and educationists had stipulated that Pakistan might not reach these goals by the end of 2015.
“But, we are asking the government to prove these evaluations wrong by intensifying efforts to achieve the commitments held in Dakar for the EFA,” she said during a media- EFA meeting held at a local hotel.
The meeting was informed that United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) was involved in a process with the education ministry to evolve a specific definition of literacy in Pakistan because it affected data collection for correct assessments which was a big challenge in countries like Pakistan.
The meeting was told that India and Bangladesh remained coherent in their efforts to improve literacy rates in their respective countries. Pakistan, on the other hand, had recently started making efforts in this regard where the national commission on education was even reduced to the EFA wing in the education ministry because of finances.
Female literacy is also a major concern while poverty, social and cultural constraints and lower status of women in the society in general have led to the neglect of girls/women literacy.
Statistics for Bangladesh and Pakistan showed that over two- thirds of women lack the ability to read and write while in India, over half of the women were illiterate.
Ms Breines said Pakistan had gone beyond two per cent of its GDP in spending on education, but the minimum requirement Unesco had set was four per cent of the GDP.
According to recent estimates, she said about 50 million people above the age of 10 years were illiterate in Pakistan. However, she said Unesco was following the Dakar framework of action and the first step in this regard was to bridge gender gap by 2010.
“Pakistan is wasting huge potential resources by not educating its females,” she deplored, adding that two-thirds of girls/women were not attending any school.
“We need education which can provide skills and insight,” she said.
Unesco was also asking the government to start learning process for students in their respective mother tongues because the country had a diverse culture. Later, education could be converted into national language and then to international language step by step.
She said Unesco was also suggesting the education ministry to consider initiating a programme where the students should start schooling at the age of six or seven instead of five. To bridge the gap, the concept of nursery education be encouraged.
However, the idea attracted opposition by the media people who argued that it would make education expensive besides at the age of seven, it would be difficult to encourage students to attend schools.
Unesco was also assisting Pakistan on teachers training, improving working environment for teachers and involving community to stand behind the teachers.
Mr Inayatullah, a renowned educationist, said Pakistan sat at the lowest rung of the literacy ladder, adding that though Pakistan was at the threshold of a promising future due to recent initiatives, still the biggest challenge was how to implement these programmes.