LAHORE - Despite repeated claims made by the previous government, it failed miserably to achieve the target of enrolling at least 1.7 million children in elementary education as defined in the education policy. According to a survey conducted by the Education Executive Club (EEC) comprising retired senior officials of the education department, only 0.5 million children could be enrolled by the session 2008 starting from April. Moreover, the number of children seeking admission in elementary education has declined by 5 percent over the past 10 years although successive governments were portraying the picture otherwise. The survey also notes that although necessary legislation was promulgated in Punjab and Sindh to make the elementary education compulsory, the enrolment could not be achieved as desired. According to an estimate 20 million children are still out of school in the country because of prevailing flaws in the education policy, planning and failure in implementing various projects. The fundamental flaw is the absence of a comprehensive, long term and well-defined national education policy. Policies are short lived and are changed along with the governments. The document also suggests that every government has its own priorities but unfortunately education has never been a part of them while the government functionaries pay lip service only for the education sector. The new government elected after February 18 is also working on a new education policy. For this purpose consultations with different stakeholders and study of previous drafts are underway before formulating a new policy. However, Prof M Sharif Malik who is a member of EEC is not much optimistic saying the new policy is bound to fail because various irritants are neither paid a proper attention nor are removed for making the new policy a success. He says that there are inherited flaws in the system with which no government is seemingly willing to deal with. The survey points out following reasons for the present status of education in our country. (1) Policies in conflict with Islam, Nazria Pakistan and practical needs of the day (2) Education system based on political and administrative references instead of religious, ideological, social and ethical values (3) Continuation of the system dating back to the British rule (4) Unplanned changes in the curriculum (5) Class based education system (6) Violation of merit and corrupt practices (7) Non-professional attitude of teachers (8) Islamiyat missing from the syllabus of class III and creating controversies (9) Changing the academic session from April to September (10) Stagnant environment of educational institutions (11) Unqualified and incompetent teachers and resultant lack of quality (12) Ever increasing cost of education (13) corruption and misappropriation of funds along with its diversion to other sectors (14) Political interference (15) lack of facilities in educational institutions and (16) Inconsistent political process and dictatorial rule. EEC has stressed to the government to remove the identified hurdles, otherwise any new policy would face the same fate.