Over the years educational standards in Pakistan have fallen steeply. The major reason is the government’s neglect of the sector’s needs. While many countries invest heavily in education, Pakistan allocates barely 1.7% of its GDP to the sector.

Lack of funds has resulted in all-round deterioration: a crumbling infrastructure, outdated learning materials and an acute shortage of qualified teachers. There is rampant corruption and mismanagement at all levels of education administration. Appointments are made not on merit but on personal and political considerations. This Is particularly so in Sindh province.

A recent report  by the Planning Commission paints a dismal picture of the structural inadequacies plaguing Pakistan’s education sector and expressed concerns about the country’s preparedness to play its role in a competitive world. The District Education Performance Index report states that the entire education system is in the ‘low performance’ category, mainly due to insufficient public financing and poor-quality teaching.

The Prime Minister recently spoke about the lack of access to education for children generally and especially from poor families or those living in the backward areas. According to a recent report released by the Pakistan Institute of Education, out of 71 million children aged between 5 and 16 years, about 36 million are out of school. Further, 55 percent of out-of-school children are girls, highlighting the gender gap in the sector.

Alarmingly, in certain districts of Balochistan, up to 92% of children are out of school, while in some areas in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa this figure is as high as 91%. Pakistan’s educational infrastructure, with just over 313,000 schools, is woefully inadequate to cater to the needs of the growing population. The student-teacher ratio stands at 1:39, far below global standards.

Data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, especially the Living Standards and Social Measurement Surveys highlight the differential access to education of children belonging to different household income groups. The enrollment rate of children in the top income quintile is over 150% or twice as high as children in the bottom quintile, depending on the level of education.

Needless to say, the lack of access to education is one of the key factors contributing to the perpetuation of intergenerational inequality in Pakistan. The expansion in the school system in the country has not  kept pace with the growing number of children of school-going age. According to the Academy of Education Planning, the number of primary, middle, and high schools expanded rapidly in the decade of the 90s, with a combined growth rate of 4.3% annually, which was well above the growth rate in the number of school-going age children in the country. But from 1999-2000 to 2020-21, the growth in the number of schools slowed down to only 1.4% per annum. In line with this decline,  the number of teachers combined in both public and private schools fell by over 30,000 from 2017-18 to 2020-21.

During the 90s, the school enrolment rate was as high as 6.4%. But later this rate declined to below 4%. In recent years, the teacher-student ratios have fallen sharply, negatively impacting  the quality of education. The UNDP Global Human Development Report of 2022-23 described in detail the failure of the educational system of Pakistan, whereas India and Bangladesh did much better. Pakistan failing to improve its education systems is the main reason why the country has fallen from the medium to the low level of human development and is now bracketed with Sub-Saharan countries.

In recent years, allocations of funds for education by the federal and provincial governments have not kept pace with the growing needs of the sector. There has been a decline in the education expenditure as a percentage of the GDP from 2.1% in 2017-18 to 1.6% in 2021-22. The corresponding figures for India and Bangladesh are 4% and 2.2% respectively. The PBS has also provided estimates of  the contribution of the education sector, public and private, to the GDP, which has also fallen from 2.9% in 2017-18 to 2.6% of the GDP in 2022-23. This clearly indicates that the government assigns low priority to the education sector leading to its progressive decline and the resulting negative consequences for the economy and society as a whole.

Educational collapse is directly linked to the multiple challenges that we face today, including economic crisis, social unrest, income inequalities and political instability. We have neglected the education sector, and so we could not build the requisite social capital which sustains a progressive economy. The bleak state of affairs in the education sector calls for the delaration of an emergency and reordering of priorities in order to allocate and inject massive funds to rescusitate a sector that is seminally linked to our struggle for survival as a nation.