PETF to launch educational budget enhancement drive

The Pakistan Education Task Force (PETF) has planned to launch campaign to enhance education budget from existing 1.4 percent to 4 percent and a signature campaign to be sent to the President, Prime Minister, Chief Ministers and Parliamentarians in this regard.
Besides, the PETF has decided to initiate a series of campaign actions to take necessary steps that are critical to halting the emergency through relief, recovery and rehabilitation measures and perhaps more, said a PETF advocacy document "Education Emergency Pakistan 2011 as part of a campaign March on Education," released here on Monday.
The PETF is being co-chaired by Special Adviser to the Prime Minister on Social Sectors Shahnaz Wazir Ali and Sir Michael Barber on behalf of the British Government. The publication is articulated as juxtapositions on myth and reality on a number of critical dimensions of education backed by evidence to inform the public for urgent debate and suitable actions.
The call for education emergency has been fuelled by the on-going debate on the extent, jurisdiction and process of devolving education to the provincial levels in the wake of the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment of the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan.
For education, the bonus of the 18th Amendment are two critical articles viz. Articles 25-A and Article 19-A. While Article 25 A makes education for the first time a fundamental justice able right and obligates the state to provide free and compulsory education for all children of the age five to sixteen, Article 19-A or the Right to Information is guaranteed as a fundamental right.
The 18th Amendment has also led to new configuration of domains of legal responsibility as what were earlier seen as federal, concurrent and provincial jurisdiction have been shifted. The 18th Amendment in its article 101 Amendment of Fourth Schedule to the Constitution highlights two major shifts.
Any interplay of legal and technical provisions has created opportunities and confusion for many citizens of the country as a legal mine field open to interpretation for designing new configurations across federal and provincial levels. There are multiple concerns like future of the National Education Policy 2009, Private Education Institutions Regulatory Authority (PEIRA) and others that need to be unpacked and debated at this juncture if the education emergency has to be understood across all its complex elements and halted through sensible actions.
The bonus of Articles 25-A and 19-A under the 18th Amendment may sadly be wiped out prematurely if there is a blind simplistic adherence to the immediate implementation of the ending of the concurrent list without adequate rationale for retaining or devolving critical functions across all sub-sectors of education to the provinces.