Loud Thinking

Pakistan sleeping with illiteracy

Education Emergency

An excellent letter by Mr. Imran Takkar, Peshawar, Published by the daily “Daily Times” on 16 July 13.

Sir: The fundamental role of education in contributing to the cognitive, emotional and intellectual development of a child cannot be overstated. Hence, the right to education has time and again been recognised an an essential right of all human beings. Furthermore, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UNESCO Convection against Discrimination in Education 1960, the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 1966 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 have all instituted the basic right of all individuals to get meaningful education. Pakistan, in addition to being a signatory to these conventions, has also endorsed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Education for All (EFA) goals. If we speak of education as being the right of an individual, our constitution regards it as a “fundamental right” but, unfortunately, in Pakistan, even after more than 60 years we lag far behind what could have been achieved. If we make the MDGs (of which Pakistan is a signatory) a benchmark to assess our education system, we may find startling figures. For instance, MDG goal number two says, “Ensure that by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling” but Pakistan still has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world and the second largest out of school population, The number of out of school children is more than that of India, Ethiopia and even Nigeria. In the percentile literacy rate Pakistan even lags behind countries like Bangladesh and Nigeria.

The recently published annual report by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC) shows that almost 25 million children and adolescents are out of school in Pakistan, out of which seven million (aged between three to five years) have yet to receive primary schooling. The poor state of education in the country is evident from Pakistan’s position on the Education Development Index where Pakistan is ranked at 113 out of 120 countries. With the current rate of progress, Pakistan will fail to reach the education related MDGs by 2015. The SPARC annual report further said that almost 12 million school going children are out of the school net, while last year, in April, UNICEF reported that around 7.3 million primary school going children were not going to school. It is estimated that girl children account for 4.21 million of the total.

So far, nothing has been done to reform the education system, despite the 18th Amendment, which made the provinces responsible for education up till higher secondary levels and made education free and compulsory for each child from ages five to sixteen. It has become evident that only making changes in the constitution and laws can never bring educational reforms. It needs real political will and practical intentions, i.e. investment in primary education needs to be increased substantially to attain prospective progress towards set targets and goals outlined in the MDGs and EFA initiatives. In this context, the importance of investing in primary education has been magnified in the aftermath of the 18th Amendment whereby access to primary education has been declared a fundamental right under Article 25 A of the constitution. Keeping in view the best interests of the child and a prosperous Pakistan, the current government should take effective administrative, financial and policy initiatives to upgrade and redesign the education structure according to the needs and requirements of the nation and the country. In fact, it has become a dire need to call an education emergency in the country; we need mass mobilisation of the general public as education is the basic step towards the country’s overall development.