Daily Times

Investing in education should be the government’s single, most effective strategy for reducing global poverty. Prioritising education is also helpful in accomplishing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). If all the children in low-income countries could read, it has been estimated in countless surveys that global poverty would drop by a whole 12 percent. Similarly, girls education is an equally effective investment for achieving long-term health benefits for a nation because it helps in saving the lives of mothers and babies that, in turn, benefits the whole of society.

As we all know, education is a fundamental human right like food or healthcare. Article 26 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that everyone has an equal right to education. Education is not only a right but is also an indispensible basis for human development. It contributes to fostering peace, democracy and economic growth, as well as improving health and reducing poverty. The state plays an essential role as protector of this rule, setting standards and norms that guarantee quality and equality of opportunity. Since the UN’s Education for All framework was established in 2000, both developed and developing countries have made considerable progress towards achieving these goals. However, many more will still be far from the desired targets in 2015. It is unfortunate that most marginalised groups have continued to be denied opportunities in education over the decades. An estimated 25 million children who attend primary schools in developing countries are struggling to read even basic words. Over the last two decades, national education policies and international aid for education have mainly focused on improving access to primary schools and completion rates.

Progress has been steady on these two indicators but the focus now has to be shifted towards ensuring that every child should get quality education and the children who attend schools should actually learn. Children who fail to read in the early grades will fall further behind each school year, when reading ability is progressively used as a tool for acquiring other types of knowledge. Poorly performing students struggle to catch up and some of them simply drop out of school. Once the child is in school, improving the quality of learning is the most challenging target for all the collective education partners involved and to help minimise the dropout rate.

Constructive learning can only be achieved by ensuring the quality of education. A worldwide shift is vital in improving educational opportunities for the 250 million children who are unable to read, write or do basic mathematics, 130 million of whom are in schools. But different factors contribute to limiting the quality of education that children receive and this impedes learning outcomes. I believe these factors include lack of textbooks, overcrowded classes, absent children and teachers, poor use of classroom time, parents unable to monitor homework, lack of use of the mother tongue, developmental delays resulting due to lack of early childhood interventions, inappropriate or insufficient learner assessment and limited teaching skills.

There should be one core set of goals aligned with the global development agenda, equipped with a more detailed set of targets that make up a post-2015 education framework. Each goal must be clear and measurable, with the aim of ensuring that no one is left behind.

To achieve this, progress should be tracked by the achievements of the lowest performing groups, making sure the gap between them and the better off students is narrowing. The number of years young people spend in school is one measure of overall progress in access to education. A report prepared in collaboration between the government of Pakistan, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics, provides a detailed analysis of out-of-school children and is important for complementing the ongoing work in all provinces and areas to scale up evidence-based educational activities to ensure that all children have equal access to quality education. The study confirms that more girls than boys are out of school: 38.9 percent of primary age girls are not attending school and the rate is 30.2 percent for boys. Children from poorer households are proportionally more out of school: 49.2 percent compared to 17.5 percent in the richest quintile.

Sadly, dropout is highest in grade five (42.8 percent), indicating that many children do not enter lower secondary education and, therefore, do not complete basic education. If the challenge of out-of-school children and causes behind high dropouts are not addressed, the existing out-of-school children’s data will be added to current youth statistics and, ultimately, an addition to adult illiteracy growth. However, in delivering quality education, the state should not be alone; it must cooperate with families, communities, civil society organisations, the private sector and others. We need to do efficient collaborative planning to avoid future aggravation of poverty. We must bind all the stakeholders together to improve the delivery and financing of education and meet the MDGs.

Moreover, the present government has also announced that it will soon be implementing a national plan of action for education to accelerate progress and double education spending. Let us hope that this is not just a paper promise and empty rhetoric for political consumption. To be frank, the record of past performance in this regard is not very inspiring.

The writer is a social and political activist based in Lahore and can be reached at salmanali088@gmail.com