EDITORIAL: Although reports on the dismal state of education in this country appear from time to time, a new one entitled “District Education Performance Index Report” jointly launched the other day by Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal and British High Commissioner Jane Marriott, perhaps, is the first to offer a comparative analysis of the weaknesses in the provinces delivery systems.
Its assessment based on the key aspects of infrastructure and access; inclusion ((equity and technology); and learning, the report found only Islamabad to be a high performer, all the 133 districts in the provinces fell in the low to medium performance category. The overall average score stood at mere 53.46. Most reasons for this sorry state of affairs are all too familiar.
Province-wise breakdown shows that while 56 districts fall in the medium performance bracket Punjab leads with 32 districts followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with 16, and Sindh with 8. More than half of the districts i.e., 77 are low performers. Of these 22 are in Balochistan, and 33 in Sindh.
However, as the Planning Commission’s Member Social Sector & Devolution Rafiullah Kakar explained, the overall best performing province may not be best in all the indicators.
Punjab, for instance, on balance had a better rating, outperforming other provinces in infrastructure and access as well as inclusion indicators, but did poorly on the education sector governance and public financing. Its governance-related issue seems to be related to the frequency with education secretary is changed, staying on the job for an average of just six to eight months.
KP outclassed other provinces in education governance, management and public financing, yet it ranked lower in learning outcomes. Sindh lagged behind on almost all counts, including infrastructure, access, governance and management despite having the highest ranking in public financing.
No wonder the phenomenon of ghost schools and ghost teachers is associated with Sindh. Balochistan ranked the lowest in nearly all areas, which is alarming but hardly surprising given the developmental challenges the province faces. Still, it managed to produce slightly better results on the most important count of learning.
All the above details are illustrative of the fact that education, the building block of socio-economic progress, gets the least priority in our provincial governments’ scheme of things.
The sector’s share in their budgets is grossly insufficient. And as pointed out by the Planning Commission Member, out of the current meagre allocations 90 percent goes into paying staff salaries.
The situation is further compounded by inefficiency and ineffective spending of limited resources made available. One can only hope the present report will serve as a wakeup call for the provincial governments. They must increase investments in education with a focus on improving governance and learning outcomes all across the districts. These issues, though, can be best addressed by duly empowered local governments.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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