Islamabad - Federal and the two provincial governments, where Pakistan Muslim league-Nawaz (PML-N) is in power, decreased budget for education sector for the year 2016-2017 compared to the previous year, suggests a report.
According to a report of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), during the financial year 2016-2017, authorities in Pakistan again failed to fulfil their promise of allocating at least four to six per cent of their GDP and at least 15-20 per cent of the public expenditure for education.
The average spending on education in Pakistan remained around two per cent of the GDP, and in 2016, the federal and provincial governments allocated Rs84.19 billion to education.
This amount accounts for 2.83 per cent of the GDP.
The federal government’s share of the education budget is less than half that was allocated to Punjab and Rs70 billion less than that allocated to Sindh.
“Punjab government following the footsteps of the federal [government] has maintained its previous years’ trend of lowering the budgetary allocations for education in the fiscal year 2016-2017,” the report says.
As per the finance bill, the provincial government allocated Rs323 billion for education in the current fiscal year.
The HRCP report quoting the budget documents disclosed that education budget was 58 per cent of the Annual Development Programme (ADP), allocated for the outgoing year.
While last year, it was 77 per cent of the total ADP reducing the allocation to 19 per cent.
The budget also includes Rs12 billion for the Punjab Educational Foundation (PEF), Danish Schools and Endowment Fund; otherwise, it is around Rs312 billion.
The report says that the percentage share of education in Punjab’s overall budget has seen downfall from 26 per cent in 2013-2014 to 19 per cent in 2016-2017.
The provincial government allocated Rs605 billion to technical education, which is only two per cent of the education budget.
The report also said that a large part of the ADP for education also remained unutilised.
Similarly, as per report Balochistan government also drastically decreased allocations for education development in the outgoing year and allocated only 17 per cent of the total provincial budget for education.
“This is the lowest percentage share of its budget to education that is Rs49.1 billion, out of the total Rs289 billion, in comparison with other provinces of the country,” the report states.
Non-development expenditure for education was Rs42.67 billion and development expenditure was Rs6.65 billion, which is nine per cent of the development budget.
As compared to previous year, non-development expenditure was increased by 15 per cent and development budget was decreased by 40 per cent.
In the outgoing fiscal year, the development budget for schools was slashed by 42 per cent to Rs4.4 billion.
And out of the recurrent budget Rs37.4 billion were apportioned for salaries and related expenditure, which is 88 per cent of the recurrent education budget.
The development budget for schools was reduced from Rs7 billion in 2015-2016 to just Rs1.6 billion in the budget 2016-2017 which is almost a reduction of 77 per cent. Meanwhile, the higher education budget was increased to Rs13.7 billion in the outgoing year, which is 80 per cent increase in the sector as compared to the previous fiscal year, the report says.
The HRCP report also declared the higher education sector in serious crisis after the 18th Amendment.
The report said that since the passage of 18th amendment and devolution of the education sector to provinces, higher education seems in serious crisis in the country.
As per reports, Balochistan universities had remained complainant against the HEC and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was yet to take any shape.
Under the 18th Amendment, the provincial governments were supposed to establish their own HECs, but despite the passage of more than six years, only Punjab and Sindh had established their own HECs, while Balochistan, KPK and Gilgit-Baltistan failed to make any substantial progress on this front.
“The latest QS [Quacquarelli Symonds] higher education institution rankings 2016-2017 showed Pakistan at the bottom of the table. The country doesn’t have a single university ranked among the top 500 of the world in the latest Times Higher Education (UK) rankings,” report said.
rahul basharat