The founder of Pakistan Quaid Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah laid high stress on acquisition of education.He said in 1947 in Karachi, “Education is a matter of life and death for Pakistan. The world is progressing so rapidly that without requisite advances in education, not only shall we be left behind others but may be wiped out altogether.’’
The constitution of Pakistan the Article 25-A guarantees the right to free and compulsory education to children between the ages of five to sixteen years old. Another Article 37 B of the constitution further lays stress that the state will remove illiteracy and provide compulsory secondary with possible period. Unfortunately, we have neither acted upon the advice of our father of nation nor accomplished the constitutional rights of our citizen. That is why we have not been able to develop an appropriate education system which represent our country as a prosperous, educated and progressive nation.
The newspaper reports published during 2015 to 2019 reveals that our country has not done justice with education and it has been long overdue of national importance since its creation (Zaidi, 2019). Our illiteracy has been taken at international level and we are among top 10 countries given assistance for education (Ahmad, 2015). We have failed to develop a proper education system because neither our educational degrees or considered abroad nor we have developed competencies and skills among the students. According to an article by Houdbhoy, (2018) we have slightly improved language and arithmetic skills in 30 years’ time. He further highlighted some of the other issues of ghost schools, lack of funds, refusal to exposure of learners to critical thinking, hybridization of traditional and modern education system which has further confused the learners thinking on their decision of choice for selection. It shows that the government is has failed to provide the citizen with the fundamental rights of education even after 70 years.
According to a report Pakistan is the lowest among the Asian countries in allocation of fund in its GDP which has never touched the 3% of annual GDP while Mongolia spends 8.5%, Iran 5.4% Maldives 8%, south Korea 4% India 3.7% and Pakistan 2.76% (Ghazi, 2018). Another official reports which was published in 2018 says that 22.84 million between age 5 to 16 are out of schools out of the total 51.33 million that becomes 44% of the total children population. It shows that how pathetic our situation is and we are going to be among the world most illiterate nations in the 21st century. We have seen empty slogans from the government and none of the government since the creation of Pakistan has been committed to bring prosperity and innovation in education system which is the cause of our unprogressive poor nation. We believe in ideas not in practical initiatives. We have not exceeded our GDP more than 2.75% while in 1960 UNESCO conference held in Karachi had suggested to spend at least 4% for education for developing countries. We did not do that. Our government schools are like black hole where the bright future of our children is sucked and the private schools are red vampires which sucks the parents’ blood but do not saturate the minds with lofty ideas. There are a few elite class schools from where when children groom up become ruler and the number of students from government schools is too less.
There are some other factors which have weakened the education system. According to book written by a German author, “Exit voice and Loyalty “lack of trained and politically recommended teachers with political patronage have destroyed the Pakistani classroom. As a nation we have not been able to deliver due to poverty, discrimination among different segments of society, inadequate teachers and government apathy. When we look at the scenario of physical infrastructure 18% primary schools have one classroom, 26% schools have one teacher 32% schools have no electricity, 22% have no toilets,21% have no boundary walls 22% have no drinking water and 7% primary schools have no buildings (Abbasi,2018).
There are many issues which hinder the prosperity and progress of the country and poor education system is one of them. Our education system is staggering like a skeleton which has to be structured by fixing muscles, circulating bloods in the veinsto make it stronger with the provision of trained teachers, enough budget, enough resources and uniform curriculum which attract the leaners to start going to schools happily rather than forcing and bribing for schooling.
Our education system will be successful if the children happily get up and go to schools, when they are taught and engaged in meaningful activities, when they think critically. All that is possible if the government is sincere and committed to take a positive step of enough budget allocation, recruit teachers on merits, arrange refresher training programmes, enhance monitoring system making it teachers friendly, provide enough teachers, all schools are equipped with enough resources and design a uniform curriculum for all the citizen. If we could have followed what our founder had advised us perhaps, we would have a different progressive Pakistan. Otherwise with 22 million illiterate children our image of the global world with working on MDG or SDG will remain dream. But let’s hope for the best and change which I foresee thinking of Shelley lines , “ O wind, if winter comes can spring be far behind.”
Ali Nigah Jan
M.Ed. Student
Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development Karachi Pakistan
