PESHAWAR, Jan 12: With Pakistan confronting a potential risk of missing major goals set by the World Education Forum held in 2000 at Senegal to ensure education for all by 2015 , the country needs to arrange Rs200 billion to implement its national action plan seeking 86 per cent adult literacy rate for both men and women by 2015.
"In this context (86 per cent literacy rate), 81 million adults will be made literate, 525,000 literacy courses or classes will be conducted, 90,000 non-formal basic education schools and 110,000 vocational/trade centres will be established at an estimated cost of around Rs200 billion," contains a United Nations document handed out to the participants of a discussion jointly organized here on Sunday by the Unesco Islamabad office and the Pakistan Association for Adult/Continuing Education, a Lahore-based society.
The discussion was meant to raise awareness level among the journalists of Peshawar of the Education for All (EFA) programme, its objectives and Pakistan's position as far as achievement of the goals set under the World Education Forum are concerned.
The participants were informed that Pakistan was among the 28 countries, out of a total of 154 countries required to achieve the EFA by 2015, which were facing a "serious risk of not achieving any of the three goals" set by the world education forum.
Though Islamabad has formulated a national action plan to achieve education for all by 2015, the country's ability, according to the document, to raise around Rs200 billion to implement the plan appears to be a big question mark.
Mr Arshad Saeed Khan, Unesco's Islamabad-based senior national specialist for development education, made a presentation on the EFA declaration of 1990, goals set by the World Education Forum and the member countries' progress towards achievement of these goals. He apprehended Pakistan's ability to achieve the goals set for 2015 in view of its failure to spend more on the education sector. The country, he added, was spending 1.8 per cent of the GDP on education against the internationally required standards of at least four per cent.
Pakistan appears to be at the bottom when its education sector expenditures as the percentage of the GDP is compared with the 5.2 per cent of Bhutan, 4.1 per cent of India, 4.6 per cent in case of Iran, 5.7 per cent of Malaysia, 3 per cent in case of Nepal and 2.4 per cent of Bangladesh. He said that apart from investing more funds in the education sector, the country also needed political will, stronger leadership and stakeholders to support the EPA objectives.
Mr Atle Hetland, an Islamabad-based education consultant of Unesco, said the NWFP was the province where most of the work had to be done to improve education standards and raise literacy rate, particularly among women. "We need education relevant to us and our future, culture and cultural integration by making certain changes in it to accommodate the dot-com generation," said Mr Hetland, adding:"We should facilitate the change to happen without causing serious brakes to achieve the desired results".
He said, in an attempt to achieve the targeted results, the country would also have to focus on all the spheres of life to meet the main objectives.
Mr Inayatullah, president of the Lahore-based association, said that in an effort to achieve education for all by 2015, the country would at first needed to ensure free education before declaring it compulsory. He said the government was focusing both on formal and informal education. But still there were 50-55 million people above the age of 10 years who could neither read nor write.
"This high number of illiterate people reflects serious deficiency, and no nation could move forward without overcoming a problem of such a magnitude," added Mr Inayatullah.