Experts call for multi-sectoral approach to education

Experts at a seminar emphasised the need for adopting a multi-sectoral approach, conducting constituency-wise education surveys and reallocating resources by withdrawing exemptions from various sectors to prioritise education spending to effectively address the challenges in the education sector.

The seminar titled ‘A Holistic Approach to Improve Pakistan’s Stagnated Education System’ was organised by Pakistan Women’s Foundation for Peace at a local hotel on Saturday afternoon.

Economist Dr Kaiser Bengali said the issue of education goes beyond education itself. “The state of Pakistan has no interest in promoting education,” he added.

He opined that some people were genuinely committed to education, others were only in it for money. Bengali said that a school charged Rs2,000 for just adding a newborn’s name to admission list and when the child was in fact admitted to the school, he had to pay Rs100,000 as a security deposit. “What for? Will the child run away with something from the school?” he asked.

“This is not education, it’s a business,” he lamented. “Universities are also like this. There is one university which is just there for money laundering. They have fake students on their rolls. They make money through illegal channels and whiten it by saying this is student fees,” he claimed.

He explained: “When you adopt and embrace a philosophy called nealiberalism, this is to happen. The state decided somewhere in the late 80s that education is not its business. Housing, health and giving jobs is not its business. Then this is what will happen because private sector will only respond to purchasing power and is there for profits.”

Bengali said the private sector will give the education which helps it make a lot of money, and that is why universities everywhere started offering MBA programmes. Even an institute of modern languages and a textile university started offering MBA degrees. “We have not created any private sector institution that offers first-class mathematics education because a mathematic graduate will not earn as much as an MBA one and have little promotion prospects,” he went on.

“So we are not producing any good mathematicians. If you don’t produce mathematicians, you will not produce scientists because mathematics is the mother of all sciences. As a result, we have no scientists and engineers.”

He questioned how many MNAs or MPAs in the last 75 years have lost elections because he or she failed to provide education. “None,” he answered. “Education is not even an issue in elections.” About the recent budget, Bengali said: “Its exclusive purpose is to address the IMF. Employment, economic growth, industrial production, exports, health, education and housing are no longer interest of the state. The finance minister has one-point agenda: How to get more loans to repay past loans.”

He called for a constituency-wise survey of enrollment, dropout rate, performance levels to see which elected representative has done better in his constituency when it comes to education.

Baela Raza Jamil, CEO of Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi and founder of the Pakistan Learning Festival, said there has been no education policy since 2009. The 2009 policy became defunct when in 2010 the 18th Amendment devolved education, including curriculum development, policymaking and budget allocation to the provinces, she highlighted.

She said inequality was increasing as poverty is pervasive. “Sixty percent of the population is trapped in chronic or churning poverty. Now, Karachi is experiencing a severe heatwave due to climate change, leading to a health crisis. Education is linked to both the health crisis and poverty. Next year, our 50 percent of the country’s population will be living in urban areas as per an estimate. Out of the total urban population, 40 percent lives in urban slums.

“In Karachi, that figure is 65 percent. The issue in urban slums is not just the lack of education, but also the absence of basic amenities like water, electricity, and waste disposal mechanisms. There are so many issues that education takes a backseat. Survival becomes the priority, and education is relegated to a secondary concern,” she pointed out.

“There is also issue of mental health. There is roughly 33 to 40 percent population, including adolescents, who are suffering from mental health challenges.”

She stated that so far, we have not been able to decide whether to allocate two percent or two percent of our budget to education. In Pakistan, where poverty, deprivation, and inequality are rampant, a multi-sectoral approach is necessary to address these issues,” she stressed.

“Unless and until what I call the ideology of multi-sectoral approach for education is not adopted and you don’t have multi-sectoralism in education, you don’t have education.”

Talking about the burgeoning population, she said there was a runaway population which is our undoing. Six million children are born every year. No matter what the provincial governments do, it all comes to nothing at the end of the day. This is a vicious cycle that needs to be converted into a virtuous one.

Dr Faisal Bari highlighted that the first national education conference was held in 1947, where the then education minister Fazal Ur Rehman declared education a fundamental right and advocated for its universalisation. However, he added, our approach to the unviersalisation had a caveat: When we have the funds, we will universalise it. This caveat has remained since 1947 and still persists today.”

He stated that while funds are available, education is not a priority in Pakistan. “If we want to provide quality education to the entire nation, we will have to strengthen our public sector, as it is the only way to ensure a minimum standard of education.”

“We must invest in education to achieve sustainable growth; otherwise, we will not have sustainable growth. Over the past 20-30 years, we have consistently seen that our growth cycles are short-lived. We achieve stability through IMF programmes for two years, but when we try to drive growth, it doesn’t materialise. We lack the human resources necessary for sustainable growth.”

He urged that exemptions to various sectors should be withdrawn and the amount be directed to education.

Sadiqa Salahuddin, executive director of Indus Resource Centre, said that our commitment to universal primary education led to a focus on primary schools, resulting in sustained neglect of secondary education. In Sindh, out of approximately 43,000 schools, 38,000 are primary schools. She questioned how the large number of students graduating from primary schools would be accommodated in secondary schools, given the limited capacity, lack of transportation and other issues.

At the start of the seminar, PWFFP Chairperson Nargis Rahman said this was the second seminar being organised by the organisation on education. “The only word added to today’s subject is holistic. The word holistic connotes a total system, in which I include budgetary allocations that remain below par at 1.7 per cent of the national GDP whereas UNSECO recommends 4 per cent to lift Pakistan out of the present education bog where an additional 2.8 million out of schoolchildren have to be educated.”