Daily Times

MANIFESTOS – III

While there are several similarities in the education manifestos of the three major parties, the documents also highlight salient priority areas.

Among the top three national parties, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) is the only one to have vowed to revise the national curricula for promotion of inter-religious harmony and tolerance in the country.

In its education manifesto, the PPP has stated that the education system will be revised to foster harmony and compassionate and to hone confidence and creative faculties of students. The party says it will engage all provinces to actively de-radicalise the curricula. Courses on history, culture and heritage of each province will be added to it, and textbook boards will be given autonomy to produce good quality textbooks.

A unique aspect of the PTI’s manifesto is a nationwide literacy programme in which the party will engage 50,000 youngsters to teach literacy in exchange for university credits. The party has stated that it will remove political influence in the education sector and create an independent and transparent mechanism to select vice-chancellors and senior administrators.

Expert opinion: Academic Dr Khalid Manzoor Butt, who heads the Political Science Department at the Government College University, says that while all three parties have promised to enhance education spending to four percent of the GDP, they haven’t mentioned clear-cut strategies and plans to do so.

The PTI manifesto also mentions regulation of university curriculum to include compulsory courses on communication, reasoning, IT literacy as well as social sciences.

Arguably, the most important agenda of the PTI’s education manifesto is the mapping and registration of seminaries across the country. It says financial records of seminaries will be documented, besides introduction of literacy and mathematics teaching as well as formal subjects in seminaries.

The PML-N is the only party that has stressed the need for education reforms in the previously Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The party has also vowed to achieve universal primary enrolment by 2023.

Education budget

As far as education budgets are concerned, all three of the major parties have vowed to increase the education budget, however, only the PML-N and PPP have mentioned a figure relative to the United Nation’s requirement (four percent of the GDP).

Even though when they were in power in the centre, both parties remained unable to enhance education spending to the four percent mark, the PPP now promises to increase spending to up to five percent by 2025, and PML-N to four percent.

The current education spending of the country stands at 2.75 percent of the GDP.

Despite its claims about having transformed the education sector in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, the PTI has failed to specify the extent to which it will increase education spending.

Girls education: stipend to incentivise schooling

Different surveys have indicated that the state of girls education in Pakistan is worse than that of boys, and it naturally lags far behind the international standards.

To improve girls’ education, all three parties have vowed to incentivise continuation of schooling of female students through provision of stipends.

The PPP manifesto aims to upgrade primary-level girl schools to at least lower-secondary level to increase retention of female students. In addition, it says that more resources will be allocated for girls’ education, and stipends will be awarded to girls to complete secondary and higher-secondary schooling.

The PTI manifesto states that it will increase the number of schools at the secondary level by upgrading schools every year in high-enrolment areas and by launching nation-wide radio, television and online self-learning programmes. It will also provide stipends to secondary school-going girls to reduce barriers to access.

Besides the provision of stipends, the PML-N manifesto does not contain much others details of its plans to improve the state of girls education. It simply states that equitable access to education for girls will be ensured.

Quality of education, teachers training

In its plan, the PMLN states that it will ensure compliance with the National Education Standards (NES) so that no school in the country is left behind without capping quality. It also aims at establishing teachers training academies at the national level to augment classroom instructions development, alongside introduction of performance/learning outcomes-based incentive structure for teacher’s career progression.

The PTI has not explained in details what improvements it will aim for in the quality of education. However, it has discussed teachers training in detail. The party will launch a large-scale teachers certification programme, and it will launch a Teach for Pakistan effort to bring high-quality talent into the public system as teachers or coaches. The PTI has also vowed to create partnerships with international universities to meet international benchmarks on teaching.

The PPP states that it will target education service delivery in districts with lowest indicators of educational quality. About teacher’s trainings, the PPP will implement a comprehensive teachers training programme which will include pre-service and in-service training drawing upon best global practices. More teachers will be recruited on merit to reduce the teacher-to-student ratio.

About technical education, PTI has vowed that it would establish 10 technical universities across the country to enhance to standards of technical education. It also added that it will transform the National Vocational and Technical Training Council (NAVTTC) to a best-in-class organisation to plan, monitor and support provincial bodies in implementation.

The PTI also aims to streamline the role of provincial institutions such as TEVTA, Skills Development Funds, Boards of Technical Education and eliminate obsolete institutions. It says it will engage foreign technical universities and providers under public-private partnership agreements to offer specialised and high-quality training.

The PPP has not mentioned technical and vocational education in its manifesto. The PML-N has said that it will provide universal access to vocational training in line with the needs of growing industrial sector and will also align vocational curriculum with job market needs.

Published in Daily Times, July 20^th 2018.