he federal budget for 2025-26 was presented on June 10. In keeping with the tradition, the Pakistan Economic Survey 2024-25 was released a day earlier, on June 9. The survey is an important official document that provides reliable statistics about various aspects of development. It is important to note that in last year’s PES (2023-24), the reported literacy rate was 62.8 percent. However, we have now been informed that the literacy rate, based on the Population and Housing Census 2023, is in fact 60.65 percent. This is a shocking revelation: instead of going up, Pakistan’s literacy rate has dropped significantly.

The issue gets further complicated when we look at the most recent figures given in the PES (2024-25) in terms of gender. The reported male literacy rate in Pakistan is 68.0 percent and the female literacy rate is 52.8 percent. There is thus a gender gap of 15.2 percent. We also notice a disparity in literacy rate in urban-rural terms. The literacy rate in urban areas of Pakistan is 74.09 percent and in rural areas 51.56 percent. Thus, the urban-rural gap is 22.53 percent. There are also stark inequalities in literacy rates across the provinces. According to the PES (2024-25) the literacy rate in the Punjab is 66.25 percent, followed by Sindh (57.54 percent), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (51.09 percent) and Balochistan 42.01 percent. The number of illiterate citizens, that was 61 million in 2017 (Census 2023) has reached 69 million in 2023 (Census 2023).

Pakistan faces significant challenges related to access, quality and relevance of education. According to the PES (2024-25), 25.1 million children are out of school. There is a shortage of schools, teachers and facilities. Substantial financial resources are required to tackle these problems. The benchmark for education spending, recommended by international organisations like UNESCO, is 4 percent. Despite tall claims, education has never received adequate funds in Pakistan. For several years now, the spending on education has been declining as a fraction of public expenditure.

For a clear understanding of the spending trend, please see Table 10.5: Expenditure on Education in the PES 2024-25. A critical examination of the table reflects a consistent declining trend in spending on education as a percentage of GDP: 2018-19 (2.0 percent), 2019-20 (1.9 percent), 2020-21 (1.4 percent), 2021-22 (1.7 percent), 2022-23 (1.5 percent). Detailed spending figures for the fiscal year 2023-24 are not given. This is a critical omission that calls into question the transparency and reliability of educational planning. The absence of data for the year also makes it difficult to track trends in educational spending. The planned spending in 2024-25 is an all-time low (0.8 percent). The PES 2024-25 clarifies that this figure (0.8 percent) is based on the data from July 2024 to March 2025, as the data for the final quarter (April to June 2025) was not available, suggesting that number might increase with the availability of data for the last quarter. Even so, the fraction will not change significantly and is likely to be lower than the spending percentage for 2022-23, i.e., 1.5 percent. This is an alarming situation as we have slumped far below the global benchmark of 4 percent of GDP recommended by UNESCO. It is also very low compared with the spending on education in South Asian countries.

According to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2024-25, 25.1 million children are out of school. There is a shortage of schools, teachers, and facilities. Financial resources are required to tackle these problems. The benchmark for education spending, recommended by international organisations like UNESCO, is 4 percent.

The federal allocation for 2024-25 for higher education is Rs 65 billion, against a demand of Rs 125.126 billion, creating a funding shortfall of Rs 60.13 billion or 48 percent. The huge gap raises concerns about the sustainability and quality of higher education in Pakistan.

The figures in the PES 2024-25 also suggest a wide gap between current expenditure (salaries, operational costs) and development expenditure (infrastructure, new projects, innovations). In 2022-23, the development expenditure was only about 10.6 percent. Such inadequate allocations hinder improvements in infrastructure, learning resources and technological modernisation.

UNESCO report on SDG scorecard Progress on National Benchmarks, UIS, Montreal, Canada, gives a useful but disturbing comparison of four South Asian countries in terms of education budget as a percentage of public budget. In 2015, the share of education as a percentage of budgeted expenditure in these countries was as follows: India (16.3 percent), Bangladesh (12.0 percent), Nepal (12.8 percent), and Pakistan (13.2 percent). Eight years later, in 2023-24, the share of education, instead of going up, decreased in all these countries except Nepal, where it remained the same as it was in 2015: in India it came down to 14.2 percent); in Bangladesh, 11.6 percent; and in Pakistan 8.3 percent.

The PES 2024-25 figures show that the situation in the education sector has deteriorated further in terms of literacy rate, spending on education, and educational inequalities on the basis of gender, provinces, and the urban-rural divide. The situation calls for serious, practical, and urgent initiatives, including an increase in the education budget to at least 4 percent of the GDP; capacity building across the provinces; promoting inclusive education by bringing changes in infrastructures and curricula; and empowering provinces and strengthening intergovernmental coordination.

The writer is an educationist. He has a PhD from the University of Toronto and a Post-doc from the University of Oxford. He is the author of ‘Education Policies in Pakistan: Politics, Projections, and Practices’. E-mail: shahidksiddiqui@gmail.com