There has hardly ever been a time in our history in which the education sector has seen progress, development and enviable results. Now, in the year 2015, things have not only remained unchanged, they have gotten a lot worse. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) carried out the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Survey (PSLM) for the year 2013-14 and reportedly found that the overall literacy rate of the nation fell from 60 percent the year before to 58 percent for the year in question. Sindh and Balochistan showed the very worst literacy rates out of all the four provinces. In a country like ours where education and the average literacy rate is in an abysmal state, to see us moving forward into the future with no clue as to how to educate the next generation is a tragedy indeed.
Literacy and the entire education sector in Pakistan has always been in a bad way but what the report missed out on telling is what factor exactly has caused this further dip in national literacy. The report showed that the provincial and federal government combined spent a measly Rs 537.6 billion or two percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) on education, which has actually been the case for a number of years now. It seems education is woefully low on the list of priorities for the government. Even if the government does increase spending on education in the upcoming budget, the root causes of our deficiency will never be addressed if the funds are not put in the right place: keeping our children in school. The report shows that every four out of 10 children are kept out of school by parents who prefer to make their children a source of earning rather than sending them to schools that are no better than abandoned ruins. The underlying factors have remained the same: teacher absenteeism, little to no infrastructure, untrained teachers and staff, lack of basic facilities in public schools and a strict regime of corporal punishment. Unless these issues are addressed, any funds delivered to the education sector — even the shoddy 2.1 percent — will have little effect on our steadily decreasing educational statistics.
In this time of extremism and violence, it is more important than ever before to defeat barbarity with literacy, to beat back the ignorant scourge with the pen and knowledge. Pakistan needs to reverse its lacklustre attitude towards educating its future generations, young people who are finding their place in society through guns and bombs instead of inside classrooms and schools.
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