he constitution is a guarantor of basic human rights, ensuring the provision of basic and modern facilities for all. Article 25 of the constitution proclaims: “All citizens are equal before and are entitled to equal protection of law.” Article 25-A, which was inserted by Constitution (Eighteenth Amendment) Act, 2010, affirms: “The state shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to sixteen years in such manner as may be determined by law.”

Pakistan is also a signatory to the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. Like other signatories, it has pledged to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Goal 4 of the SDGs calls for Pakistan to enhance access to education by establishing new schools, upgrading existing schools, improving the learning environment, digitising educational institutions, promoting distance learning and capacity building of teachers.

Despite these rigorous constitutional and international commitments and various campaigns run by the civil society, Pakistan has the world’s second-highest number of out-of-school children – estimated at 22.8 million children. 53 percent of these children are girls. Pakistan usually spends around two percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on education. School education does not guarantee employment. Pakistan’s spending on education is the lowest in the region. Hardly 1.77 percent of the GDP was spent on education at the federal and provincial levels in the financial year 2022 although most UN organisations advise spending at least four percent. The country’s highest spending on education was in the year 2017-2018, 2.12 percent of the GDP. Pakistan’s literacy rate is barely 63 percent. Therefore, Pakistan is ranked 125 out of 130 countries based on how well they perform in education.

Education remains one of the least discussed issues during election campaigns. This begs the question whether education has ever really been a priority for political parties in Pakistan?

The question may be answered by exploring and analysing the manifestos of major political parties. Here, we will examine party manifestos, proposed agendas and the intellectual capital used to formulate education policies of major national political parties, mainly the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), and the Awami National Party (ANP) during the 2018-2023 period.

Generally speaking, education gets some space in manifestos but with scant details. Sometimes it is an unstructured hotchpotch of self-contradicting proposals. Most of the proposed policy initiatives get single sentence statements. Somehow education is usually mentioned in the manifestos but with reference to: a) increasing education financing to a certain percentage of GDP – e.g., in PML-N’s case to four percent, and in the PPP’s and PTI’s cases to five percent, and six percent in case of ANP; b) reforming curriculum; c) role of national language and medium of instruction; d) multiple examination systems and the need to introduce uniformity; e) improving access to and quality of education; f) implementing Article 25-A; g) increasing teacher salaries and promoting their grades; h) decentralising education, yet maintaining a grip on school textbook contents; and i) giving scholarships and laptops to students.

The manifestos suggest that all parties are focusing mostly on school education; higher education is treated as an afterthought. For example, both the PPP and the PTI have dedicated only a couple of sentences to higher education in their manifestos. The references to education policy in the PML-N and ANP manifestos are also sparse but their policy initiatives are evenly split between school and higher education. Their education policies contain a long list of higher education policy initiatives. However, some of those so poorly phrased that it seems that they were tacked on just to fill the space.

Apart from the common objectives, there are some contrasting proposals in the manifestos of these parties. The ANP and the PPP promise to impart primary education in mother tongue since there are positive effects of teaching in mother tongue on the overall conceptual abilities of children in learning lessons. They propose to introduce and teach English, Urdu, Chinese and other languages at the higher secondary school level.

The PML-N and the ANP are committed to building a university in every district. The manifesto of the PML-N gives space to madrassa reforms. The madrassas will be provided financial assistance and other incentives to bring their syllabi and standards in conformity with the mainstream education to improve the employment prospects of madrassa graduates. The PTI pledges to switch the medium of instruction in universities from English to Urdu. This will inevitably mean translating hundreds of thousands of books by foreign publishers or producing a handful of inferior knockoffs for local use.

Undoubtedly, all these issues are significant and should be debated. However, the frameworks needed to implement the proposed reforms and mechanisms to achieve the desired goals or results through these policy initiatives are missing. There is a dire need to design a framework and develop a mechanism in which these issues, and others, can be embedded. Without a framework and a mechanism, conceptual as well as practical, it is almost impossible to see how we can set targets for ourselves, measure performances and fulfill promises. The sooner that is done, the better it will be.

The writer has a PhD in history from Shanghai University. He is a lecturer at GCU, Faisalabad, and a research fellow at PIDE, Islamabad. He can be reached at mazharabbasgondal87@gmail.com. He tweets at @MazharGondal87