Daily Times

LAHORE: A white paper issued by the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) on failed educational policies of the government alleged that the standard of education in the country was the worst in the world.

Releasing the white paper on Sunday, PAT leaders Basharat Jaspal, Fayyaz Warraich and Brig (r) Mohammed Mushtaq stated that over $541 million aid that was given by donors for education had been misappropriated.

They said that according to the UNESCO Global Digest, Pakistan was the third largest recipient, after China and India, which was given aid to the tunes of $541 million for development of education sector. Despite this huge amount, literacy rate could not improve, while no other significant development was witnessed in the country, they added.

The white paper noted that in Punjab alone there were over 900 government educational institutes functioning without any head while over 500 schools have been illegally occupied, whereas the government was oblivious of this fact and failed to act against the occupants. “The Punjab government has failed to achieve even a single goal it had set in the Millennium Development Goals for 2015. The main goal included 100 percent enrollment of children in schools,” the paper noted.

It claimed that the government allocated the least amount of funds to the education sector in South Punjab, which was shameful for its rulers who issue tall claims of development in the media on daily basis. The paper further said that India spends 3.9 percent of its GDP on education, Iran spends 4.7 percent, Turkey 6 percent, Bhutan 4.9 percent, while Pakistan only spends two percent on education.

According to the white paper, UNESCO Education For All Global Monitoring Report has revealed that over 49 million adults in Pakistan don’t know how to read and write while 6.30 percent of the world’s illiterate children reside in Pakistan.

Of the primary-going children, 33 percent leave school before reaching class five. As far as standard of education was concerned, Pakistan stood at 123rd position. The United Nations Global Education Monitoring Report 2016 has disclosed that the education system in the country was over 60 years old, adding that 64 percent boys in villages attend school while only mere 14 percent girls were allowed to go to schools in villages.

The report stated that according to some domestic and international calculations, over 25 million children do not go to schools in Pakistan. As census has not been conducted for several years now, the government does not have concrete figures in this regard. According to world ratings, Pakistan does not have a single university among the top 500 universities of the world while China has 24 and Turkey has five universities in the list.

The PAT leaders stated that instead of copying the Orange Line Metro Train concept from China and Metro Bus System from Turkey, the Pakistani rulers should have followed the educational systems of these countries.

They said that according to economic survey of the country, literacy rate of Pakistan fell to 58 percent from the previous 60 percent. In Lahore, 2, 90,000 children remain out of school.