production of cotton in pakistan

Education crisis issues faced by pakispakistan

Despite increase in budgets, enrollment in schools remains low, quality of learning is poor, and there are not enough buildings or teachers. Ali Abbas reviews the long-standing issues with education in Pakistan. Even after years of investments, reforms and promises, the education sector remains weak in Pakistan. Data from the Pakistan Education Statistics (2015–16) report, Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2016, Alif Ailaan’s 2014 report titled “25 Million Broken Promises” and various other sources identify key trends and challenges in the education sector. The 6 biggest challenges are:

Children Who Should be Enrolled Are out of Schools
Overall enrolment increased from 42.9 million students in 2013–14, to 44.4 million in 2014–15, and to 47.5 million in 2015–16. In terms of children aged 5–16 years, enrolment increased from 27.3 million students in 2014–15 to 28.6 million students in 2015–16. An analysis based on stage in education is given below;

A big challenge is the children who should be enrolled in school but are not. By focusing on how well children are doing at school, we limit our attention to those who are enrolled. But the number of out-of-school children is not small either. In fact, in 2015–16, while 28.6 million children aged 5–16 years were in school, 22.6 million were not.

Most children in the out-of-school population are boys:

Some of the reasons children drop out or don’t go to school in the first place include the families’ needs to keep children at home to help with farm work and other income-generating activities, as well as lack of motivation to study among the children, and inability to pay the expenses related to education.

Substitutional shortage of Trained Teachers

The total number of teachers from primary to higher secondary levels has increased from 1.27 million in 2013–14 to 1.35 million in 2015–16. What is interesting to note is that while increasing amounts of money are being spent on teacher salaries for existing teachers, there is still a substantial shortage of teachers. The PES 2014–15 indicates that in Baluchistan, a shocking 23.7% of sanctioned posts are vacant. For Punjab, the figure is as high as 16.5%. Figures for other regions are given in the table below. Data on sanctioned positions was unavailable for Sindh and Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT).

A large number of teachers are tasked with teaching students from different grades during a single session in one class room. This can affect student’s capacity to learn, given that students from different grades and learning levels are in the same class. It also affects the teacher’s ability to follow the curriculum of a given grade. In 2012, this number stood at 11.7% for urban schools and 22.1% for rural schools.

Quality of learning is poor 

In 2014, only 46% of boys aged 5–16 years could read a sentence in Urdu, or Sindhi/Pashto in Sindh/KP, respectively. This figure was even lower at 39% for girls. In 2016, these numbers are 43% for boys and 36% for girls, which implies that the quality of education in the country is getting worse (ASER 2016).

Similarly, in 2014, 49% of boys aged 5–16 years could read at least some words in English. This figure was lower at 42% for girls. In 2016, 40% of boys and 33% of girls could do the same, showing a significant drop.

In terms of arithmetic, in 2014, 45% of boys aged 5–16 years could subtract. This figure was lower at 38% for girls. In 2016, these numbers are 44% for boys and 36% for girls.