Some call it an education emergency. Some call it an education crisis. Others label it an education calamity. Call it by any name, the truth is that Pakistan’s education sector is in deep trouble with no early solution in sight. The UNDP Global Human Development Report of 2022-23 highlighted the failure of the education system in Pakistan. This is said to be the main reason why Pakistan has fallen from the medium to the low level of human development and is now bracketed with Sub-Saharan countries.

Sometime back, the Prime Minister lamented the lack of access to education of children generally and especially from poor families. One glaring example is that of 26 million children, aged 5 to 16 years, who are out of school. This number of out-of-school children in Pakistan is one of the highest in the world. Most OOS children, over 70 percent, live in rural areas. 58 per cent of these children are female.

According to a recent report, Pakistan is facing a twin education crisis: 26 million children are out of school, while 43 million children in school are not learning as much as they should. The report says, “Only 23 per cent of students at late primary age (10) in Pakistan can read and understand an age-appropriate text.” Quality education in the country has become a privilege. Children from wealthy backgrounds have the resources to get an education at well-equipped institutions. Due to this head start, they go for higher education in foreign universities. But for a majority of children in Pakistan, quality education is not available.

The reason is that the public education system in the country is in a moribund state. The education budget is abysmally low and is decreasing from year to year. There has been a decline in educational 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% of the GDP respectively. At the same time, the contribution of the education sector, both public and private, to the GDP has fallen from 2.9% in 2017-18 to 2.6% in 2022-23. In the general scheme of economic planning in the country, education is given a low priority, especially by the provincial governments, which have reduced the educational budget from 11.6% to 10.7% of total public expenditure.

The government’s reluctance to invest in education has resulted in the mushroom growth of private schools in urban areas, most of which have no idea of what quality education is. The teachers in these schools are untrained and low paid. As a result, children coming out of these schools are half literate who cannot compete with the products of quality institutions. Pakistan’s education system heavily relies on rote learning. Both parents and schools pay no attention to teaching critical thinking skills.

According to a report, from 1999-2000 to 2020-21, there has been a big slowdown in the pace of establishment of new schools. In line with the slowing down in the rate of expansion of the school network, the growth in number of teachers annually has also fallen by over 50 per cent. The number of teachers combined in both public and private schools has fallen by over 30,000 from 2017-18 to 2020-21. In line with the general trend, the school enrolment rate has also been declining. The failure of the education system to expand at a sufficiently rapid rate, especially the school network, explains why net enrollment rates have not risen adequately and the number of out-of-school children remains high.

The recent declaration of an education emergency by the prime minister is welcome but not enough. This declaration must be matched by prompt action at appropriate levels. These include well thought out policy decisions leading to actionable steps and increased investment. Timely execution demands strict monitoring at the top level.

The formation of a task force on education is the first step towards reform. Given the critical nature of the crisis, the response must be both urgent and comprehensive. The scale of the problem requires significant reforms all across the educational landscape. These include increasing the number of schools, training of teachers, overhauling assessment and examination systems, updating curricula and textbooks and governance restructuring. Pakistan’s education system encompasses more than 250,000 schools, staffed by over two million teachers. To trouble-shoot this vast network, we need well thought out, coordinated measures to address both the quantity and quality of education.