Our education system

According to media news Pakistan is celebrating education and Malala day with the hope that government will provide equal education opportunities for everyone. The government has also launched a four year literacy program under which more than three million children of poor families especially girls will get free education in Pakistan. Unfortunately despite declining graph of education system government is just doing cosmetics steps to satisfy people. Original conditions of education is far from ideal in Pakistan. Recent statistics are showing grim picture of education sector in Pakistan. According to UNESCO some 7 million children in Pakistan are out of primary schools in which 60 percent are girls.

Only 20 percent of girls have completed primary level schooling in rural areas of Pakistan. Literacy rate of girls in Northern Pakistan is only 6 percent. Despite all of these challenges Pakistan spends less of its national budget on education than other small South Asian counter Like Nepal, Maldives and Bhutan. True reality is that several western and UNO funded schools are just alive on papers and have no physical presence.

Ghost schools and ghost teachers are true reality of Pakistan education sector. Now world community is promised to spend around one billion dollars to help Pakistan poor education sector but most of people in Pakistan rightly believe that everything is politically motivated and will not serve the purpose only corrupt elements of government will enjoy this money and education will not feel any comfort. True reality is that the biggest barrier to poor education in Pakistan is a lack of government interest and powerful feudal system in villages and poor areas. Political influence in education institutions is also a main cause of worse performance of education system in Pakistan. Evenpublic service commission examinations are not transparent and most of results are politically motivated. Now it seems true that due to increasing education expenditures and self finance schemes government is limiting education only for upper class people. 

Due to poverty, raising graph of unemployment and tough financial conditions thousands of children has forced to leave their education and now working in inhuman conditions as a child labor. Despite huge increase in education expenditures and self finance schemes education systemhas failed to provide alternative of Dr. Qadeer Khan, Professor Saleem-uz-Zaman Siddiqui and Hakeem Mohmmed Saeed like people which is very unfortunate.

Khawaja Umer Farooq 

—Jeddah, KSA