Pakistani Nobel laureate and noted girls’ education activist Malala Yousafzai has said that her fund was striving hard to improve girls’ access to education in Pakistan.
Tag: Pakistan education
Three separate first information reports (FIR) have been registered against students of Punjab University for engaging in violent clashes and vandalism on the university premises on Monday. Police also produced closed to 200 students in an anti-terrorism court on Wednesday in connection with the violence, with the court sending 180 students to jail on judicial remand.
Dr Zafar Mueen Nasar had been facing opposition from inside the varsity and HED Minister Syed Raza Ali Gillani over alleged financial irregularities
In a rather unexpected move on Friday, Punjab University’s (PU) Vice Chancellor Zafar Mueen Nasar tendered his resignation to the Punjab governor, apparently over the issue of the government asking the varsity to give away two kanals of its prime land to a religious organisation for building a seminary.
Regularised teachers include those who cleared NTS test for contractual appointment as well as those who cleared Sindh and Iqra University tests
Following several violent police crackdowns and baton charge on Sindh teachers protesting for regularisation and promotions for the past several; days, the province’s chief minister has finally issued directives for the regularisation of 21,000 teachers, besides approving promotion of others.
The never-ending tussle between centre and provinces over power has again come to the fore
The cold war between the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan and provincial educational authorities is seeing another battle, as both Punjab and Sindh provinces have directed vice chancellors of public sector universities in their jurisdiction not to attend a VCs’ conference called by HEC in Lahore.
Stressing on the need for revisiting education standards at religious madrassas across the country, Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Thursday said religious seminaries must offer more than theological education to pupils.
The provincial government has ordered vetting of all textbooks used in higher education institutions across Punjab to cleanse the curriculum of objectionable material and curb the trends of extremism seen rising at institutions across Pakistan.
Pupils remain in constant need of motivation and appreciation by instructors in order to keep striving to overcome obstacles that impede their progress towards learning. However, many forget that the pupils are only as eager to learn as teachers are willing to impart the knowledge. Which is why encouraging teachers who engage in this noble profession becomes even more critical for ensuring that students of today become agents of true change in the society tomorrow.
Sindh education minister claims 23,000 ghost recruitments in provincial education department in 2012
The Sindh government on Thursday resorted to violence to end a protest by teachers demanding payment of salaries of the last five years. Police contingents resorted to manhandling and baton charge to disperse teachers who demanded they be paid for services offered to the government .
Pakistan was placed 125th out of 130 countries studied by the World Economic Forum for its Global Human Capital Development Report 2017. Let that sink. One hundred and twenty fifth of a total 130 countries. As appalling as it is, the country’s rank becomes even more worrisome when one considers the nations that managed to fare better than ours. Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Lesotho, Chad and Liberia were among the countries that ranked higher than Pakistan.
Many of these countries are far poorer than Pakistan and have been ravaged by civil wars for years at a stretch. However, The World Economic Forum (WEF) report says the development of human capital in these remained more impressive than in Pakistan.
According to WEF, the Human Capital Index 2017 studied 130 countries to gauge how “well they are developing their human capital on a scale from 0 (worst) to 100 (best) across four thematic subindexes—Capacity, Deployment, Development and Know-how—and five distinct age groups or generations—0–14 years; 15–24 years; 25–54 years; 55–64 years; and 65 years and over.
The comprehensive study was undertaken to measure the complete human capital potential profile of a country and researchers claim it can be “used as a tool to assess progress within countries and points to opportunities for cross-country learning and exchange”. The capacity sub-index measured the percentage of population that has “achieved at least primary, (lower) secondary or tertiary education, respectively, and the proportion of the population that has a basic level of literacy and numeracy”. The deployment sub-index measured how many people are able to participate actively in the workforce, while the know-how score measured the “breadth and depth of specialized skills use at work”. Development sub-index took stock of “formal education of the next-generation workforce and continued upskilling and reskilling of the current workforce”.
Pakistan performed rather poorly in all these sub-indices. It was ranked 111th for capacity, 123rd for both deployment and development, while it fared marginally better, 96th, than its neighbours for know-how.
Youth disuse?
The median age of Pakistan’s population is 22.5 years, making the county one of youngest among the comity of nations. China’s median age in comparison is 39 years, while Japan’s is 46.3. Political sermons and talk show debates make us believe that the young population makes Pakistan ready for an economic take-off. Sadly, the youth cannot enable that flight without the requisite know-how, skills and capacity. An alarming statistic from the same report points to a greater problem. WEF estimates that the median years of education the Pakistani population receives is 4.6 years. Just 4.6 years! Contrarily, its 12.5 years for Japan and 12 years for Norway, the top ranked country in the index.
The reasons for the paltry average schooling median of 4.6 for Pakistan are many; limited access to schools, poor in-school facilities, departmental corruption, parent attitude towards education, especially girls’, substandard training of teachers and economic hardships of families making way for a high dropout rate from schools etc. But the primary reason for the sorry state of affairs of our country’s human capital has to be a serious lack of an educational vision at the policy level. Education and its provision have never remained a priority. For evidence, we need not go much further than the fact that a vast majority of our population still believes education does no good. In more than 65 years of its existence, the state hasn’t been able to make the idea of education being important dawn upon its subjects, let alone making available the facilities that enable every child to get an education.
The focus of successive governments for many years has remained on projects that are visible to a wider audience. Carpeting of roads, construction of overhead bridges, metro bus services; tangible proofs of work done. Such projects have been portrayed as evidences of the country’s progress. And the purported progress is manifest in the WEF index.
The report highlighted that the human capital potential of Pakistan was “held back by insufficient educational enrolment rates and poor-quality primary schools”. In the National Plan of Action 2013-2016, it was proposed that public spending on education would be taken up to 4% of the GDP. Like other goals, this was missed as well and Pakistan’s current public spending on education is estimated at 2.6% of GDP. Norway spends 7.4% of its GDP on education, and even Yemen, the lowest ranked in the index, spends 5.1% of GDP on education.
So the next time you hear someone saying Pakistan is on way to becoming an economic giant, remind them of the pitiable state your fellow countrymen are in with respect to human development.
There is still time before the youth bulge we like to brag about turns into a cancerous tumour. If only someone does something about it.