Education is the premium mobile or the engine of human progress and development. Economic and social progress in the modern knowledge-based world is inconceivable in a country that neglects the education of its people, especially the children and the youth.
Unfortunately, successive governments in Pakistan at the federal and provincial levels have been guilty of dereliction of their primary duty of educating the children and the youth on whom the future of the country depends. All governments in Pakistan, whether elected or military and whether federal or provincial, bear responsibility for this shameful neglect of education. The adverse results of this policy of neglect can now be seen not only in the field of education, but also in each and every other sector of the society.
This situation is particularly distressing in a country where the overwhelming majority of the people profess the religion of Islam, which lays so much emphasis on acquisition of knowledge. There are numerous verses of the Holy Quran and sayings of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) urging the Muslims to acquire knowledge. When the Muslims paid attention to these commands, they prospered and sciences and learning thrived in Muslim lands. The decline of the Muslims started when they gave up their quest for knowledge and stopped using their mind to overcome the challenges of their times.
Let us see how the successive governments in Pakistan despite their professions to the contrary have ruined the education sector. The litmus test of the commitment of a nation or a government to education is the percentage of GDP and the annual budget that it allocates to it. It is not enough to shout from the rooftops about the high priority that one attaches to education. What matters is the allocation of resources to this sector. It is here that almost every government in our brief history has failed. A comparison of our performance with that of some developed and fast developing countries would drive home the point.
According to the norm laid down by the Unesco, a country must spend at least 4 percent of GNP on education. The Pakistan Economic Survey for 2011-12 reveals that Pakistan has never reached even close to this figure. During 1980s when we were ruled mostly by a military dictator, we spent only 0.8 percent of GNP on education annually. The situation improved somewhat during the 1990s under elected governments when the annual national expenditure, including public and private spending, on education rose to 2.3 percent of GNP.
The decade from 2000 to 2010 when again we were under a military dictator most of the time, the annual national expenditure on education declined to 2.1 percent of GNP. So much for Musharraf’s commitment to education!
The performance of the present PPP-led federal government has been no less disappointing. During 2010-11, the national expenditure on education declined to 1.8 percent of GNP. The performance during the next financial year (2011-12) was equally bad, reflecting, in effect, the low priority assigned to education by the outgoing federal government.
By way of contrast, the developed and fast developing countries allocate a far higher proportion of their GDP to education. According to the latest figures available, public spending alone of South Korea on education was 15.8 percent of the total government spending and 4.8 percent of GDP in 2011. If one adds private sector spending on education, the total national expenditure on education in South Korea would be much higher. The US public spending on education in 2011 was 5.4 percent of the GDP and 13.1 of the total government spending. Again the total national spending on education in the US would be much higher. Denmark’s public spending alone on education was 8.7 percent of the GDP and 15.1 percent of the total government spending.
The low priority attached by our governments to education in the form of inadequate allocation of resources has inevitably produced disastrous results. According to the government of Pakistan’s official reports, the literacy rate, which was 57 percent in 2008-09 in the country, marginally rose to 58 percent in 2010-11. This rate was lower than the literacy rates of all the regional countries. The literacy rates of fast developing and developed countries were mostly in the 90s. The net enrolment rate, which is the percentage of children enrolled in primary schools, declined in Pakistan from 57 percent in 2008-09 to 56 percent in 2010-11. Even in Punjab, which is otherwise ahead of other provinces in various education indices, the net enrolment rate declined from 62 percent in 2008-09 to 61 percent in 2010-11. The situation was equally disappointing in other provinces. There is little possibility, therefore, of our country reaching the millennium development goal of universal primary education by 2015.
According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) issued by our Planning Commission last week, 75 percent of the students in class-I drop out before class-X. The survey of government and private primary schools showed that 50 percent of public schools and 25 percent of private schools in the country had not provided functional toilet facilities to their students.
As for secondary and tertiary level education, the less said the better. The proficiency of our secondary level students is far below international standards, especially in mathematics and sciences. We do not have even a single world class university in the country.
This dismal picture of the education sector in the country is the direct consequence of the upside-down priorities of our rulers, who have failed to provide the resources required for high quality education to our children. It is also partially the result of the excessive demands of the defence sector on the government’s budget. What else can one expect in a country where the debt servicing and the military expenditure far exceed the net revenues of the federal government? The net result of this criminal neglect of education is that we are raising a nation of illiterate and semi-literate people, who will be in no position to compete with the rest of the world in the race for progress and prosperity.
Consequently, as time passes, we will be left far behind other nations in terms of economic growth and development. It is hardly surprising that Pakistan’s GDP growth rate, which was as high as 6.5 percent per annum in 1980s, declined to 4.8 percent per annum during the last decade.
On the other hand, countries like China and India, which have paid more attention to education than what we have done, have registered much higher economic growth rates. Of course, there were other factors also responsible for their better economic performance compared with us like higher national saving and investment rates. But the strength of their education sectors has certainly played a vital role in enabling them to register high economic growth rates.
In view of the serious adverse consequences of the past neglect of the education sector, the incoming federal and provincial governments after the general elections should take a firm decision to accord the highest priority to education in their future plans. This decision should reflect itself in substantially increased allocation of budgetary and national resources to education so as to expand the coverage and raise the quality of education in Pakistan on a war footing.
We should aim at increasing the national spending on education to at least 5 percent of the GDP within the next few years, if we want to have any chance of competing successfully with the rest of the world, especially with other countries in the region. Nothing less than that would suffice to overcome the challenge that the nation faces in the field of education.
The writer is a retired ambassador and the president of the Lahore Council for World Affairs. Email: javid.husain@gmail.com