Speakers at a Pre-budget consultative seminar on "Education Financing" have called for allocating four percent of total GDP for education in the budget to meet binding international obligations under the millennium development goals.
They stressed that an effective monitoring and evaluation system should be developed for appraisal of annual budgetary allocation in education to ensure efficient using of the funds. The speakers said there was a need to take concrete steps for bringing improvement in administrative system of educational institutions.
The consultative session with political parties on "Effective Education Financing: An overview of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province" held under auspices of Institute of Social & Policy Sciences (I-SAPS) in collaboration with UK aid Department for International Development (DFID) here at local hotel. Representatives of the ruling PPP-led coalition and opposition parties including Ayub Shah, women MPA Noor Sehar Bibi, and Khawaj Yaswar Naseer, Ms. Munawar, Pir Sabir Shah, provincial chief PML-N and Rahmat Salaam Khattak, JUI-information secretary; Haji Jalil Jan, Professor Dr Ibrahim from Jamaat-i-Islami, Mushtaq Ahmad from ANP, Rohul Amin, a renowned educationist and scholar.
On the occasion, Ahmad Ali, Research Fellow from I-SAPS presented facts and figures through a detail statistical presentation, while referring a research study, he said that about 40 percent children were out of schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The enrolled students aged five to nine years were 52 per cent while enrolled students ageing five to 16 was 60 per cent, he explained. He further said that the college sector had also been ignored in the country and no improvement had so far brought in the last few decades.
Ali said that it was good to promulgate laws and frame regulations but the politicians should also pursue implementation of such laws. The speakers stressed the need for maximum focusing on primary and secondary level education, saying that the pathetic situation of education institutions and lack of basic facilities were a big question mark on the present government. They said that there was a need of drastic reforms to cope with problems in the sector. Therefore, they said that there must be needed an effective monitoring and evaluation system to keep check for utilisation of funds, and any weakness should be ratified.
The members of opposition parties expressed grave concern over the pathetic education in the public sector education institutions, saying that education standard was declining every year in the government-run schools. They asked the government to pay attention toward primary education.
The participants on the occasion were unanimous in their views that education sector should be brought in accordance with developed world.