Urgent action needed to tackle ‘education emergency’

Pakistan faces an ‘education emergency’ with millions of children out of school, crumbling infrastructure and constantly shrinking education budgets. — File Photo

KARACHI: According to a report to be released on Wednesday, Pakistan faces an ‘education emergency’ with millions of children out of school, crumbling infrastructure and constantly shrinking education budgets.

Yet the report claims the situation can be turned around in a matter of years if there is political will for change.

Education Emergency Pakistan, published by March for Education, a project of the Pakistan Education Task Force, contains well-researched statistics about the extent of the crisis facing Pakistan and possible ways to exit the quagmire. The organisers of the project will also present a petition to the provincial chief ministers at the end of the month calling for the state to maintain education budgets.

The report points out that under the Eighteenth Amendment the state is constitutionally mandated to provide free and compulsory education to children between five and 16 years. However the Millennium Development Goal for education is now out of reach for Pakistan, while India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are on track to meet this particular MDG.

The report says that seven million children in the country are not in primary school while three million will not see the inside of a classroom. Pakistan is second in the global ranking of out-of-school children. It says that at the current rate Punjab will provide all children with their constitutional right to education by 2041 while Balochistan will reach this goal by 2100.

Read More:http://www.dawn.com/2011/03/09/urgent-action-needed-to-tackle-education-emergency.html