Wednesday, December
14, 2011: Speakers at a Policy forum on ‘Education Financing in Pakistan:
Challenges and way forward’ demanded substantial increase in budget allocation
for education from current meager figure of 2% to 6% of the fiscal budget. The
forum was held here on Wednesday by ActionAid Pakistan in collaboration with
Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) to mark 14th Sustainable
Development Conference (SDC). Among the participants included parliamentarians,
civil bureaucracy, educational experts, academicians and civil society
activists.Jemal Ahmed, Country Director ActionAid Pakistan said that education
financing was a key for social development. He stressed for need to ensure
accessibility, availability, affordability and acceptability of education for
all. Education can play an important role in bringing real change in the lives
of poor people especially the most marginalized section of the society because
it is a basic tool of social and individual empowerment, he added. Sardar
Husain Babak, Minister for Education, KPK said that there was need for
contextualizing the issue. Security is the major issue of KPK that affects any
development programme being undertaken by the government, he said adding that
extremists were causing severe damage to education infrastructure. He provided
an instance from yesterday when four schools were blown by terrorists in a row.
Tariq Qamar Baloch, Additional Secretary Colleges and Higher & Technical
Education Balochistan said that the government had achieved a land mark success
by enhancing education budget of Balochistan to 11% of the fiscal budget.
However, he acknowledged that problems for promotion of quality education was
innumerable ranging from capacity issues, security and stability crisis,
geographical vastness (spread) and restrained accessibility for all. He said
that in service teacher training programme initiated by Balochistan government
was innovative as well as effective. Dr Slaman Hamayon, director ISAPS said the
resource allocation for education at national as well as provincial level had
always been very scarce. It resulted in high administrative cost that reflected
a bad mark on quality of education. He was of the view that merely 5% students
were performing well whereas remaining 95% students were underperforming in
both academic and practical fields of life. Uzma Tahir, Manager Policy,
Advocacy and Research, ActionAid Pakistan that there was need to address the
issues of mystery of macroeconomics, demystifying the national education
budget, tax justice issues and debt servicing & defense budget. There are
various challenges which need to be addressed including lack of political will,
user fees, reaching all children especially girl child, quality teachers for
quality education, adult literacy and early childhood education. She
recommended that the development & education goals should be at the center
of all the economic planning and that there should be progressive taxation policies
for long term investment on education. Mukhtar Ahmed, Chief of Party FAFEN
stressed for the need to comply with article 25A of the constitution which
binds the state to provide free and compulsory education to all children of 5
to 16 years of age. He said that since and efficient efforts were required to
implement the law. Then there is dire need to mobilize the available resources
for promotion of education, he concluded.
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