“Educate children and it won’t be necessary to punish adults,” said the famous Greek philosopher and mathematician, Pythagoras. But such nuggets of wisdom do little good unless there is the will to turn them into action that delivers results. In the modern setting, it is up to governments, especially in developing and poor countries, to find ways to make children attend school. Considering abnormally high levels of poverty in most backward countries, it is understandable why parents are unable or uninterested in their children’s education. A vast majority of them struggle to make ends meet and put food on the table every day, so schooling is a luxury they can’t even afford to waste time thinking about. Many other prefer to employ their children in ways that can generate income for the family, again because of biting poverty, so the option of education does not even cross the minds of people belonging to this particular category.
But these facts are very well-known, which is why states frame policies that enable the largest number of children to attend school while also meeting the material needs of their households. A fine example came from neighbouring India very recently, where junior schools in some states incentivised parents by offering free lunch for children that would come to school. Since food was the main reason why some parents put their children to work instead of in school, this idea has been working very nicely in some of the poorest districts of that country. Some Pakistani provincial governments have employed similar ideas, offering cash in return for schools, etc. But such efforts have been scattered and never followed through properly.
The provincial government apparently doesn’t have any money to throw into education at the moment because there are always some political decisions that take precedence.
That is why the Punjab Free and Compulsory Education Act 2014 was greeted with a lot of joy. It mandated the government of Punjab to provide free and compulsory education to all children between the ages of five and 16 years. And since Article 25A of the constitution already enjoins the state to provide this facility to all children within the said age group, all that was required was for the government to notify said act and make it a law to dramatically change the fortunes of the people of Punjab within a generation. Yet, for some reason, the act has been languishing for close to eight years now and there is still no notification. There’s also apparently no way to get through the complicated web of offices and sub-offices within the Punjab education department to get a straight answer out of them about the long delay, or when any manner of progress can be expected.
This goes to show how low education is placed on the government’s priority list. This, despite the fact that everybody in the whole world, especially leaders that sit on top of governments, understands very well that the only thing that can change the fate of nations is how they educate their children, and how technically strong their workforce becomes. The main problem, quite obviously, is money. The provincial government apparently doesn’t have any to throw into education at the moment because there are always political decisions that take precedence. And since the government borrows practically every penny that it spends, directly or indirectly, it’s more concerned with mega projects that can fetch quick votes as opposed to long-term structural changes that society, as a whole, is desperately in need of.
Considering how this act has been in deep freeze since 2014, it doesn’t seem likely that things will move forward anytime soon. This situation, then, puts the province’s civil society to a stiff test. It is now up to parents and concerned citizens to pressure the government to issue the necessary notification that will finally get the ball rolling. Media will also have to play a very important role because if it can amplify this problem in the right manner, those at the top will have to take notice and do something about it.
Why pass the act, after all, if there was never any intention to follow it through to the end? Women are particularly sidelined in this manner because the passage of this act was considered a monumental game-changer for them. Now, it seems they will have to wait even longer to free themselves from the chains of regressive captivity because while the state readily took credit for pursuing free and compulsory education, it did not do anything to ensure it in practical terms.
The writer is a freelance columnist and has bachelor in English literature from Kinnaird College Lahore