Education: over-diagnosed and under-treated

We hope Sarmad Masud's My Pure Land manages an Oscar in the foreign language films category. Even if it doesn't, the redoubtable Waderi Nazo Dharejo of Qazi Ahmed, the subject of this inspiring film, has landed one.
Undoubtedly, Nazo displayed great courage in taking on the ruffians wanting to rob her of her inheritance. To us, however, the real heroism is not loading her guns to stave off the attackers but having the courage to break out of village tradition - girls can only study at home - and go on to Sindh University to get a BA degree.
In a country where only two girls out of 10, satisfy our comical definition of literacy it must have required extraordinary courage for a village girl to snap asunder the fetters of tradition and taboo.
Our education scorecard is a depressing read. On all counts, we get a failing grade. We account for a full 10% of world's population of children out of school. We outrank only Afghanistan in the global table of out-of-school children, and in absolute terms (not masked by percentage of a population whose size we are not sure of) the numbers are growing. We have the highest illiteracy rate in the region, now biting the dust with India and Bangladesh outpacing us at a fast clip. Those few who do make it to school are poorly taught - only a quarter of 5th and 8th graders meet the prescribed standards. About half the schools report 'missing facilities' like furniture, water, and sanitation. In WEF's Human Capital Report 2016 Pakistan's ranking dropped five places from a year ago to 118out of the 130 countries. Those below us hardly count for good company!
All these facts, and more, are well known. The 'crisis' has been discussed ad nauseam, and repeated calls made for an education emergency. Our educationalphilosophy remains anchored in the ideology-driven spirit of the 1959 Sharif Commission - national identity based on Islam. Our 'reforms' have centred around experimentation schemed up by bureaucrats under World Bank tutelage - informal and non-formal education, community involvement, school adoption, Education Foundations, Public-Private participation, and now low-cost private schooling.
Unsurprisingly, Education has turned out to be a fertile ground for social entrepreneurship. Higher education is emblazoned with names like Husein Ebrahim Jamal (HEJ Institute of Chemistry, twice adjudged the best institution of the Islamic world and declared a centre of excellence by UNESCO) and Babar Ali, Razzak Dawood (LUMS).
At school level there have been several notable initiatives, especially in rural areas. In boarding schools, the old Sargodhians are expanding their Tando Allahyar initiative to the other provinces. At the other extreme is the Ahmed Jaffer Foundation's Hub Public School. A rich boys' school (playing fields of Eton?) it distinguishes itself by embracing the less privileged as well- about half the student body is on full scholarships.
Top of the class is the professionally managed TCF (Citizens Foundation) that has touched all the right buttons in its pursuit of providing the right education to the right children at the right places.
But all these noble initiatives lack scale that governments alone can provide.
Conventional wisdom suggests more money and more reforms. Well, the social action programme (SAP I and SAPII) prompted us into a wide array of basic and structural reforms. There have been more than a hundred since 2000 alone. Almost every aspect - from governance to teachers to pedagogy to curriculum to testing to text books to voucher system to control of absenteeism through use of technology to education support systems - has been touched.
On financing, our current 2.5% of GDP may be below the recommended 4% (arguably, we hit the 4% mark if we add in the private sector expenditure) but in absolute terms we have seen a more than doubling of state expenditure over the last six years. At around Rs 800 billion it is about the same level as our 'formal' defence spending - and we have more government teachers than active soldiers! Provinces allocate 17-28% of their budgets to education, much higher than the global average of less than 14%, despite an absorption capacity problem with respect to the development part.
It would appear more funding is not mission critical; how it is spent is.
Experience of low-cost private schools seems to validate this. They cost more to parents, and pay less to their teachers, and yet there is a marked preference for them even in the remote areas. Why? The answer will reveal why government schools are not delivering.
What separates the low-cost private schools that deliver from the high-cost government schools that don't is ownership and accountability. No reforms will work, and there will be more wastage of scarce resources, if the government schools cannot be freed from the bureaucratic-political stranglehold.
The humpty dumpties, the decision-makers, sit too far away from the wall. No matter how good their mapping or the information systems they will never have that sense of 'ownership' that ties their reputation and fate to the school. No matter how many humpty dumpties fall we can't do without a genuine devolution of administrative and financial authority. Not to the district level - we have already toyed with the idea of district coordination and monitoring bodies - but to the school level.
And the school-level bodies have to be held accountable, in terms of both output (agreed targets of participation and dropout rates) and outcome (quality measured by third-party assessments). This would require strong inspection and monitoring systems, something that KPK has already mainstreamed.
Does decentralization of authority have a chance? No. Not until we are convinced that getting our children educated is more important than getting a government job for the errant nephew or getting a meddlesome functionary transferred. Not until we believe 'ink of scholar is holier than blood of martyr'.
Meanwhile, let the corporate world's social responsibility fill the void. It should set up schools all over (eg each branch of a bank, each distributor of auto assemblers). Better still, Girl schools, to check the bigger crisis: population explosion. Research has established education for women reduces fertility rate by 10%.
It is an uphill task but inaction is not an option. We wouldn't want to be Shatranj kay khilari, our epitaph reading, "we saw the storms coming butwe were too busy playing political-chess..."
shabirahmed@yahoo.com