Upcoming budget ‘must make bold statement on education’

Islamabad: Educationists have stated that the upcoming budget must make the boldest statement on education as under-spending in this sector has created huge disparities in Pakistan where public sector schools, though affordable, lag far behind in quality than privately-operated schools.
They said that education spending averages around 2 per cent of the GDP in Pakistan and now it is time to get the priorities right and let this be the budget where education spending exceeds that of other sectors.
A report by Unesco revealed that Pakistan boasted the second largest number of out-of-school children in the world. The only other country bypassing Pakistan in this notoriety was Nigeria. According to ‘Alif Ailaan’, a Pakistani alliance to transform the education sector in the country, provincial allocations for development expenditure in education are as follows: Baluchistan 30 per cent, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) 19 per cent, Punjab 18 per cent and Sindh 10 per cent.
It is pertinent to mention here that Pakistan, rather than reforming the education sector, tends to spend the allocated amount just to maintain the ‘status quo’. About half of the allotted amount is utilized in providing salaries to teachers and other recurring expenses.
They also pointed out that while huge amount of the education budget each year is wasted in maintenance of ‘ghost schools’ set up in almost all the areas of Pakistan, the sum left serves the pockets of the ‘so-called’ political representatives.