Education in freefall

Business Recorder

9 hours ago

EDITORIAL: With nearly two-thirds of Pakistan's 240 million people under the age of 30, the country stands at a critical crossroads. This vast youth bulge could either serve as a powerful engine for economic growth and innovation or, if inadequately harnessed — as is presently the case — morph into a crisis of widespread under-education, joblessness and mounting pressure on the nation's socioeconomic and political fabric.
The way things stand, it increasingly appears that we are on course for the latter. According to a statement issued by Save the Children on June 19, the outgoing fiscal year saw expenditure on education between July 2024 and March 2025 plunge by a shocking 29 percent. This is despite the prime minister's much-publicised declaration of an 'education emergency' in May last year, which now appears to be little more than a hollow slogan against the reality of deepening neglect.
Despite numerous education sector reports detailing how a paucity of funds has led to a plethora of issues, ranging from schools lacking essential infrastructure, an alarmingly low student-teacher ratio, the overall substandard quality of instruction and a massive 26 million out-of-school children — around 38 percent of Pakistan's school-age population — this has clearly done little to compel federal and provincial governments to treat this area with the urgency, policy attention and budgetary outlays it deserves.
Since 2018, successive governments have consistently deprioritised education, slashing its share of GDP from two percent in 2018 to just 0.8 percent this year, far below the four to six percent recommended by the UN-backed Incheon Declaration.
The sharp decline in spending also belies the government's own pledge made last year to raise education funding to four percent of GDP by 2029. Far from inching anywhere close to that target, the first fiscal year since the promise has instead seen a further drop in allocations, exposing a glaring lack of seriousness and political will to follow through on the most basic of educational commitments.
As Save the Children warns, the harshest impact of this will fall on children in Pakistan's poorest areas, where already daunting barriers to education have now grown even more insurmountable.
The latest Pakistan Education Statistics report, compiled by the Pakistan Institute of Education, explains how access to education is shaped — and often denied — by regional, gender and socioeconomic disparities. A striking example is that of Balochistan, where 75 percent of girls remain out of school, a single statistic that perfectly encapsulates the intersection of both regional and gender-based inequalities.
Taking the example of our most deprived province further, only 21 percent of its schools have electricity connections, just 28 percent have access to drinking water, 43 percent have toilets and less than half — 48 percent — are enclosed by a boundary wall. This dismal state of infrastructure stems directly from chronic underfunding, which also significantly hampers enrolment efforts, as parents are understandably reluctant to send their children — especially girls — to schools that lack the most rudimentary of facilities.
Dedicated, uninterrupted funding streams for education are also essential to ensure that schooling remains insulated, as far as possible, from climate-fuelled emergencies, like heatwaves and floods, which have too often in recent times led to prolonged school closures, disrupting learning for millions of children.
Most crucially, the growing number of out-of-school children also increases the likelihood of early marriages and child labour, making it even more difficult to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty.
It stands to reason then that breaking down the systemic barriers holding back access to education requires more than meaningless rhetoric; it demands urgent, sustained funding and genuine political will across all provinces. Inaction will end up condemning yet another generation to the margins.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025