Literacy quest

The government has decided it must set out on a quest to attain 100 percent primary school enrolment by 2018 and thereby meet international targets set as sustainable goals by nations around the world. The campaign is to be led by the prime minister and the four chief ministers. The government has also pledged that by 2018, spending on education would be raised to four percent of GDP, the minimum goal set by Unesco for countries around the globe. At the moment, Pakistan spends just around half this amount – one of the lowest investments in education in any nation including the resource-starved, Sub-Saharan African countries. To meet the target it has set for 2018, Pakistan will need to do a great deal. It is currently ranked as a nation with one of the lowest literacy rates on the planet. While officially enrolment at the primary school level is put at 92 percent, in real terms literacy – according to reports by Alif Ailaan and other organisations – stands at around 60 percent when the entire population is counted and at barely 26 percent for women. Functional literacy, experts argue, may be even lower with only a tiny proportion of the so-called ‘literate’ population barely able to read and comprehend a sentence in any language or solve a simple mathematical problem.

Beyond the overall literacy figure, there is also the matter of regional and provincial disparities. In Balochistan for example, enrolment stands at around 55 percent while in Punjab, it moves up to 76 percent. In some districts of Balochistan and parts of Fata, less than three percent of girls are ever enrolled at schools. It is these gaps that we need to strive to fill in order to reach a greater level of equity in the educational equation. The task also is not just to push children into inadequate schools but to equip those schools to provide a meaningful education. The challenge the government must take on is not only to enrol children in schools but also to offer them a real opportunity to learn. For this a serious reform of our decayed education system that offers limited benefit is required.