In protest to proposed privatisation of public schools in Punjab along with demanding for improvement in the service structure of schoolteachers, a group from the Punjab Teacher’s Union (PTU) held a sit-in outside the Punjab Assembly on Saturday. No government official came out to visit the site of the demonstrations since it was held that the ‘just’ demands of the PTU had already been agreed upon previously. As sit-ins have become a de rigueur way of demonstrating in the recent past, largely due to the politics of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, it would be churlish to deny that their frequency have made them a banal affair. However, this should not be used as pretence to vitiate the importance of those issues that sit-ins sometimes raise hue and cry over, especially if they affect a large segment of the population. The dismal affair of education is one such issue that merits considerable attention. Pakistan’s public schools suffer from a gross lack of infrastructure. In addition, the abysmal teaching staff of these schools makes them ill-equipped to impart education. The vacuum that has been left by Pakistan’s public schools has been filled by the private sector. Private schools have become a big business on their own in which they charge exorbitant fees for providing quality education — a public good that ideally must be provided to all citizens free of charge. It is not that the private sector has some magical ability through which it provides a high quality of education. The reason simply is that they have the resources to attract qualified individuals to their institutions by offering them good pay packages and giving them a decent working environment. Pakistan’s public schools, on the other hand, offer a pittance to its teachers. Moreover, the dilapidated condition of schools puts off even those who are most intrinsically motivated to serve the public. Hence, it is no surprise that Pakistan’s public schools are dysfunctional as they produce rote learners who get their qualification without actually learning anything. In light of all this, it becomes clear that privatisation is not the fix for Pakistan’s education woes. On the contrary, it is akin to evading responsibility by government as it hands out schools to the private sector and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The private sector already has a sizeable presence in the country and the services that it is providing cannot be afforded by the majority of the citizens. As far as NGOs are concerned, they cannot be relied upon to be there in the long run. Only government has the capacity to provide a public good as important as education and sustain its provision for time to come. In order to effectively tackle the problem of the education sector, government needs a long-term strategy through which it would attract talented and qualified teachers to teach. This could be done by providing them attractive salary packages and a promising service structure. Simultaneously, curriculum reforms need to take place, and textbooks need to be revised or even replaced by those that are qualitatively better than the abysmal ones taught at the moment. Moreover, school infrastructure needs to be improved so that well qualified teachers become willing to be part of faculty in those institutions. All these measures obviously need a serious financial commitment. Hence, government needs to focus on education and make it a priority in its development agenda.*