“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”, is a quote by the world’s most eminent South African leader- Nelson Mandela. Only education has the charisma to change the fate of the hapless and disenchanted populace of Pakistan. The defunct and outdated system of education is tarnishing each year and making our country globally shambolic. There are various cracks in the current system owing to out-of-school dilemmas, the dearth of sufficient institutions, the infrastructure of institutes, a multiplicity of education systems, incompetent teachers and so on. To come out of this academic dystopia, the government must endeavour certain strategies to ameliorate the status of education throughout the country.

As per the report World Economic Forum published in 2017, Pakistan stands as the 125th worst education system. Additionally, the current literacy rate of Pakistan is 62.3 percent which is far away from the literacy rate of Bangladesh which stands at 74.91. The current ratio estimates that there are around 60 million population of illiterate in the country, which is a matter of great misfortune for us.

Another hurdle on the path to quality education is the lack of basic amenities in educational institutions. There are an estimated 9247 government-run schools in Balochistan that are deprived of the basic facility of drinking water while 9838 schools do not have toilets as demonstrated by the Provincial Education Department, Balochistan. The shocking statistics have given great impetus to school dropouts. The government must realise that the youth are the state’s biggest assets and must go through the constitutional promise made under article 25-A which ensures “free and compulsory education for all”

Another dilemma of education is its complexity and vagueness. The current education system is divided into three sectors; the private sector which is standardised but beyond the reach of the poor, the public sector which is yet to be stabilised and the madrassah whose students find it very much difficult to assimilate with the current academic race. The government must look through the lens of equality and launch a single national curriculum like our neighbouring state Iran. The former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s initiative to assemble the children under the umbrella of a Single National Curriculum (SNC) was, indeed, a great strategy to invigorate quality education, though this dream awaits its fulfilment.

Among the fuelling factors for such academic mess is the incompetency of teachers. We, unsurprisingly, lack capable and well-trained teachers that could breed intelligent minds in our children. “ The number of PhD holders does not matter for Pakistan, what matters is the quality of their knowledge and fair pursuit of research”, rightly said Perveiz Hoodboy. It is a depressing fact that most of the owners of private institutes hire low-educated teachers. Keeping financial interest as their top priority, they put the career of these students in hands of the low-educated, resulting in further mitigation and creation of dismal situations in primary education. While in the public sector, such teachers, in order to avoid the shame of incompetency, commit absentees. This is one of the key causes of “ghost schools”.

In addition, the meagre allocation of the budget to the education sector further worsens the situation- only 1.77 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). This exposes the level of importance that we give to education.

FAISAL RAHIM,

Kech.