“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”

How true is Nelson Mandela in saying so. The first world countries have given primary importance to the education sector where state is responsible to educate the children. Formal and informal modes of education are adopted to nourish the mind of individuals to its fullest. They know the importance of nourishment of minds as these minds have a huge role to play later in the society. Islam too affirms the right to education for all without gender discrimination and has a holistic view of human development, which views education and knowledge as central.

Health and education are the sectors that determine progress of any country. They build and determine the future of any nation. Federal and provincial governments of any country works together to ensure provision of quality education. Alif Ailaan began to attempt to assess both educational outcomes by comparing the relative performance of different regions starting from 2013. The key goal was to produce comprehensive measure of education standards in Pakistan, covering important policy areas such as access, quality, gender parity and infrastructure. It measures and compares different parts of the country to track their performance, and to encourage healthy competition between districts and between provinces.

In a report issued by Alif Ailaan this year, Punjab has secured third position leaving behind Khyber Pakhtunkhwa which ranks fifth on the list. In 2014, Punjab was ranked 2nd and in 2015, it was ranked 3rd. Punjab has the highest number of public schools in the country and keeping up with the educational standards in the biggest province of country is a real pain. The education index covers retention from primary to middle and middle to high schools, learning among students and gender parity.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan tweeted soon after the report was released:

Alif Ailaan has put out these amazing figures on District Education Rankings for 2017. 9 of the 10 top districts are from KP; only 1 from Punjab. In same survey for 2016, 9 of top 10 were from Punjab; none from KP. A gt achievement by PTI govt in KP in critical field of education

— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) December 14, 2017

However, the PTI chairman deliberately chose primary school infrastructure scores instead of overall education scores. Only Haripur district from KP is placed at the top of the rankings among the top 10. Five AJK districts and four districts from Punjab make up the remaining list.

The performance of Punjab in education sector is quite better as compared to other provinces. Punjab has allocated Rs345,000 million for year 2017 in education. As many as 52,000 public schools have raised the literacy rate of the province. The rankings revealed that a lot of school-going children are out of schools. However, in Punjab the number of school-going children has increased from 8 million to 10.53 million. More than 12.2 million children have been enrolled in 52,231 public schools this year. More than 200,000 teachers have been recruited to improve the student teacher ratio in schools. At least Rs17 billion have been allocated for Punjab Education Endowment fund, and higher education financial assistance has been awarded to 230,000 students. In 16 districts of Punjab, Rs1000 monthly stipend is given to 462,000 female students under Khadim-e-Punjab Zewar-e-Taleem Programme and Rs6.5 billion for year 2017-2018 have been allocated under Zewar-e-Taleem Project.

Unesco recommends that countries disburse 15pc to 20pc of their budgets on education. The global average is 14pc. Pakistan spends 13pc and the country’s education budget has gone up by an average of 17.5pc every year since 2010. According to Alif Ailaan, an additional Rs400 billion on education is needed to increase spending to 4pc of GDP, bringing the education budget to Rs1.2 trillion. Efficient allocation of resources is needed badly instead of increasing budget without any plan.

Education is the basis for survival and the progress of an individual. Sadly, in our country, everyone is interested in financial gains rather than serving the community. Education is considered to be a business these days. However, these reports encourage healthy competition between districts and provinces. The results of the report might not be heartening; but they highlight specific issues that may lead all provinces to perform better increasing the overall performance of governments in education sector.