Educational Emergency

PAKISTAN faces several developmental challenges that have been left

unaddressed for far too long. Among the most debilitating from the
perspective of the economys performance over the long run are:
unchecked population growth, growing water scarcity, the inability to raise
domestic fiscal resources, and the failure to provide quality education to a large
swath of the countrys populace.
The development challenges listed above are, unsurprisingly, interconnected to
a large degree. The growing water scarcity is a function of a number of adverse
factors, including the paucity of domestic fiscal resources to build storage
reservoirs but an untenably high rate of populationincrease, leading to rapid
urbanisation, is arguably amongst the most important reasons. Among other
factors, a low level of literacy is an important impediment to lowering the
fertility rate, which is necessary to decelerate the population growth rate. A
more educated society would be expected to lead to a better tax culture and
higher domestic resource mobilisation.
Whichever way one looks at it, education plays an important part in shaping a
society and in determining its development trajectory. Unfortunately, as the
numbers show, this is an area of colossal failure for Pakistan. Consider the
following facts:
Nearly half of Pakistans population cannot read or write. The ratio for females
is abysmally lower, especially for certain parts of Pakistan such as in rural Sindh
and Balochistan, where the ratio for female literacy is 23pc and 16pc
respectively.
There are only 13 countries in the world with a lower adult literacy rate than
Pakistan, according to data compiled by the United Nations. These countries
include Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia,Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone and
Mali collectively some of the poorest countries in the world.
Depending on source used, the number of children out of school in Pakistan
amounts to anywhere from seven million to nearly 25 million. The average
number of years of schooling completed is 4.9 years in the case of Pakistan,
slightly ahead of Angola and Bangladesh.
In terms of public spending, the combined budget allocation for education by
all tiers of government in Pakistan is the equivalent of around 2pc of GDP. It
has stagnated around this level for the past several years, and remains so
despite the passage of Article 25-A of the Constitutionthat guarantees the right
to free education for every child in Pakistan.
At this level, Pakistan ranks 177th globally in terms of public spending on
Education, according to the Human Development Report 2013 issued by UNDP.

 Only seven developing countries in the world have lower public spending on
education. These include Bangladesh, Central African Republic, Dominican
Republic, Eritrea, Lebanon, Sri Lanka(!) and Zambia.