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| Pakistan's education system has failed to equip the youth with the skills necessary for the development of a modern state, society and economy. The government-run schools and colleges educate the vast majority of children. But their performance compared to the private sector educational institutions is rather poor. Since education is a provincial subject after the passage of the 18th Constitutional Amendment, it is yet to be seen whether the provinces have the capacity and necessary resources to manage education in a satisfactory manner. A quick look at the state of education is in order here below: Pakistan is falling significantly short of its constitutional obligation to provide universal primary education. And while the demand for education remains high, poorer families will only send their children to a school system that is relevant to their everyday lives and economic necessities. The failure of the public school system to deliver such education is contributing to the madaris boom as it is to school dropout rates, child labour, delinquency and crime. Public school students are restricted to an outdated syllabus and are unable to compete in an increasingly competitive job market against the products of upper class private schools that teach in English, follow a different curriculum and have a fee structure that is unaffordable to most families.
The involvement of politics in the education sector created a lot of problems due to the injection of political appointments. This further damaged public education. Many educators, once ensconced as full time civil servants, rise through the system despite having little if any interest and experience in teaching. The widespread phenomenon of non-functional, even non-existent "ghost" schools and teachers that exist only on paper but eat into a limited budget is an indication of the level of corruption in this sector. Provincial education departments have insufficient resources and personnel to monitor effectively and clamp down on rampant bribery and manipulation at the local level. The public school system's deteriorating infrastructure, falling educational standards and distorted educational system impact mostly, if not entirely, on Pakistan's poor, thus widening the linguistic, social and economic divisions between the privileged and underprivileged and increasing ethnic and religious alienation that has led to violent protests. Far from curtailing extremism, the public school system risks provoking an upsurge of violence if its problems are not quickly and comprehensively addressed. Private Education Sector is totally commercial-based and the educationists emphasize on maximizing of the profit instead of educating the nation. That's why the whole private school system, colleges and universities are far away from the reach of general public. As a result, today nearly 50 million Pakistanis, half the adult population, cannot even read or write. Female literacy rate is approximately 42 per cent which is much lower than male literacy; approximately 65 per cent. This disparity is more pronounced in rural areas, where only 31 per cent of women are claimed to be literate. We may easily find that some of the major factors that keep children uneducated are limited access to education, teacher absenteeism, low quality of education, poverty, corporal punishment and a high student-to-teacher ratio. Pakistan's literacy rate is substantially lower than that of many developing nations; only about a fourth of all adults are literate. A significant percentage of those who are literate, however, have not had any formal education. Educational levels for women are much lower than those for men. The share of females in educational levels progressively diminishes above the primary school level. Presently, access to school education is inadequate and there are also gender and rural-urban imbalances, both in the availability and quality of education. Education remains inequitably distributed among the various regions and income groups in the country. Literacy and participation rates are lower than those of other countries with similar levels of economic development. The target of minimum essential requirement for quality education has not yet been achieved. There are shortages of trained and qualified teachers, especially females. Educational Institutions also lack proper physical infrastructure, and on the other hand some are sub-optimally utilised. Teachers lack training, dedication, motivation and interest in their profession. Curricula, too, are mostly non-relevant to the present day requirements. The low base of higher education is reflected in total student enrolment of 100,000 at the graduate and university levels. The funding for higher education in Pakistan is only 0.39 per cent which is very low as compared to other countries. This should be raised to at least 5 per cent of the GNP. Our neighbouring country India is spending 6% of the GNP on Education. The national education budget of France amounts to $65.96 million or 23.31% of the overall national budget and represents 3.91% of the GNP while Malaysia is spending 17.2% of its budget on education. At present, 2.6 per cent of the relevant age group has access to higher education in Pakistan. The total enrollment in public sector universities is around 100,000 students. Given the present rate of population growth, Pakistan would have approximately 25 million population in the age group of 17-23 years. Such a large number of students' population would require a variety of institutions. In order to develop the country's human resources, what is required is the need to enhance the access to higher education to at least 10 per cent of this age group. For this purpose, the nation needs a greater differentiation and proliferation of institutions and a much larger role by the private sector as the state cannot provide sufficient funding. It is, therefore, important that the private sector should be encouraged to set up institutions of higher education. Rather I would suggest a public-private collaboration to improve the standard of education in the country in addition to making education accessible to people belonging to far flung areas. This collaboration would not only bring in uniformity of structures, curriculum and affordability of fee but also generate enough incomes for both sectors.
At present, the Technical-Vocational Education (TVE) facilities are highly inadequate and there is a dire need to broaden the base of TVE. In order to implement the concept of integration of skill development with the general stream of education, technical stream should be introduced at secondary school level, parallel to science and arts group. To implement this concept, the following steps may be taken: ¢ Introduction of Technical stream in existing high schools. ¢ Establishment of Model Technical High Schools. ¢ Translation of Technical Syllabus in Native (Urdu) Language In order to improve the education situation in the country a comprehensive educational revolution is required. We have to analyse the current education system in detail and should address the problems in very adequate, progressive and professional manner. ¢ Government education budget may be increased to three-fold immediately. It should be targeted to be 6% of GNP till 2011. ¢ New educational institutions should be launched at all of the primary, secondary and higher education levels. ¢ Private sector should also be encouraged to Invest in the education field. ¢ Education structure needs to be up-graded and redesigned according to the needs, and requirements of the nation and the country.
Regards
Shoaib Habib Memon Cell.0314 2090252 |
I think James Frye is heterosexual. He's a big fat pink blob with a beard. Looks like Santa. (He writes for all the leftist blogs and you can find his pic on FaceBook and such) Think he used to work for a union or ACORN or some such--(I'm gay and if I had AIDS I'd be tempted to give it to him I find his writing so vile, but fortunately that is not my problem.Incidentally, a long time Republican women activist I know in DC who was friends with Terry Dolan (wiki him), the guy who started the National Conservative Political Action Committee and helped foment the Reagan Revolution, and who died of AIDS, feels sure Dolan was targeted by gay leftists, who knew he had casual sex with people he had met in bars etc, and deliberately gave him AIDS to kill him and wipe out a major conservative organizer. So maybe gay libertarians and conservatives should be careful when they sleep with strangers or gay leftists!)
On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 9:28 AM, <nitr@com> wrote:
He is one commie SOB no doubt. I'm betting butt boy has AIDS.In a message dated 4/24/2011 7:39:42 A.M. Central Daylight Time, majors.bruce@gmail.com writes:
Hmmm. Relentless Obama fascist spammer and blogger James Frye has cancer.Karma gets them somtimes
Saturday, April 23, 2011
The Worm Has Turned
I've been fighting cancer so I haven't written much so here goes.
Even with that going on, there is something going on that has made me happy and sad at once. Namely how things have turned since the elections of 2010.
I was told by my friends on the right how devastated I was going to be on election night because the "Marxists" would soon be out of power. I'd be just a quivering, weeping little pile they told me. Well, I'll be the first to admit that last November could have been better and we did have our asses handed to us when it came to the House. Always the optimist, I took what comfort I could over the fact that even with the losses in the Senate we managed to hang onto that and the President was still a Democrat so the nuttier ideas from the House GOPers would go nowhere. Some things were going to slip through though, given how the Democrats bend over backwards to avoid annoying the other side too much.
I was also bemoaning that so many of our side decided to stay home last November as well but I wasn't surprised that it happened either. The less ideological Democrats were being bombarded with a pretty steady diet of how either evil Obama was or how he had "betrayed" the progressive cause since he was actually in office. The atmosphere was pretty darn negative when it came to our President and by extension the message being sent out was why bother voting, you're just going to get screwed no matter who gets in.
The Republicans, as is their wont, read the elections wrong. Instead of seeing it as the beneficiaries of low voter turnout and a successful campaign from both the far right and left to demonize President Obama, they saw it as a resounding endorsement of their ideas. ALL of their ideas, even the ones they neglected to mention on the campaign trial. So they went for it, policy-wise first in Wisconsin by going after the hated unions then going after Medicare and Social Security.
Then something very interesting happened.
I don't know which one it was but somewhere along the line people hit the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. Maybe it was the public unions being attacked or the push to privatize Medicare and Social Security but one of them did it without question. Then something happened that my friends a bit further left than I had promised and I doubted would ever happen - things had finally gotten so bad that the people woke up.
Suddenly state capitols were overcome with protesters. People were out on corners, waving signs at passing motorists. They even shut down phone exchanges with their actual phone calls to actual legislators, state and federal. People were actually doing more than signing online petitions, they were out of the house standing up to the right live and in person.
In normal times, that would be a signal to the party doing things that all these people didn't like to back off a bit. But the Republicans, tone deaf as always, had convinced themselves that they still held the majority position and decided to double down on it. How did they accomplish this? First they threatened to shut down the government if they didn't get their way entire but cooler heads prevailed that time. Those same heads lost it when their "genius" Representative Paul Ryan came out with his budget for 2012.
This was a wishlist of every thing the Republicans have wanted to do ever since the South went from solid Democratic to pretty-solid Republican. Make Medicare into a voucher-like system instead of the single payer system it is now, cut back Social Security, defund NPR, Planned Parenthood and even more like cutting food stamps and school lunches. Now, it would have been bad enough for them if this budget abomination had just stayed in the realm of "proposed" but they had to go that one more step and go ahead and pass it in the House.
Oops.
Big boo boo. Now there's actual votes to have to defend to the folks back home. No denying that or saying you really meant to do something else there.
The Republicans are now getting a taste of what they try so hard to avoid: reality. The new Tea Bag members of the House are holding town halls while they're off and instead of friendly crowds shouting down pesky liberals they're finding they are the ones being shouted at and not in a good way. Why, their "courageous" Rep. Ryan even got BOOED by a home district crowd.
Knowing the Republicans, they'll ignore even these clear signals and go even further with their policies.
Election night 2012 just might be a lot more fun than the one in 2010 was.Posted by James Frye at 1:41 PM
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Columnpk.com is a big source of Pakistani Urdu Columns, English Columns, Urdu Articles, Urdu Editorials, Special and Investigative Reports, Important News and Events from Pakistan, Political News and Views, Javed Chaudhry Latest Columns, World News, Cricket News, Sports News Analysis and much more from Jang, Express, Nawaiwaqt, Khabrain, Dawn, TheNews, TheNations and other Urdu and English Newspapers at one place.
He is one commie SOB no doubt. I'm betting butt boy has AIDS.In a message dated 4/24/2011 7:39:42 A.M. Central Daylight Time, majors.bruce@gmail.com writes:
Hmmm. Relentless Obama fascist spammer and blogger James Frye has cancer.Karma gets them somtimes
Saturday, April 23, 2011
The Worm Has Turned
I've been fighting cancer so I haven't written much so here goes.
Even with that going on, there is something going on that has made me happy and sad at once. Namely how things have turned since the elections of 2010.
I was told by my friends on the right how devastated I was going to be on election night because the "Marxists" would soon be out of power. I'd be just a quivering, weeping little pile they told me. Well, I'll be the first to admit that last November could have been better and we did have our asses handed to us when it came to the House. Always the optimist, I took what comfort I could over the fact that even with the losses in the Senate we managed to hang onto that and the President was still a Democrat so the nuttier ideas from the House GOPers would go nowhere. Some things were going to slip through though, given how the Democrats bend over backwards to avoid annoying the other side too much.
I was also bemoaning that so many of our side decided to stay home last November as well but I wasn't surprised that it happened either. The less ideological Democrats were being bombarded with a pretty steady diet of how either evil Obama was or how he had "betrayed" the progressive cause since he was actually in office. The atmosphere was pretty darn negative when it came to our President and by extension the message being sent out was why bother voting, you're just going to get screwed no matter who gets in.
The Republicans, as is their wont, read the elections wrong. Instead of seeing it as the beneficiaries of low voter turnout and a successful campaign from both the far right and left to demonize President Obama, they saw it as a resounding endorsement of their ideas. ALL of their ideas, even the ones they neglected to mention on the campaign trial. So they went for it, policy-wise first in Wisconsin by going after the hated unions then going after Medicare and Social Security.
Then something very interesting happened.
I don't know which one it was but somewhere along the line people hit the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. Maybe it was the public unions being attacked or the push to privatize Medicare and Social Security but one of them did it without question. Then something happened that my friends a bit further left than I had promised and I doubted would ever happen - things had finally gotten so bad that the people woke up.
Suddenly state capitols were overcome with protesters. People were out on corners, waving signs at passing motorists. They even shut down phone exchanges with their actual phone calls to actual legislators, state and federal. People were actually doing more than signing online petitions, they were out of the house standing up to the right live and in person.
In normal times, that would be a signal to the party doing things that all these people didn't like to back off a bit. But the Republicans, tone deaf as always, had convinced themselves that they still held the majority position and decided to double down on it. How did they accomplish this? First they threatened to shut down the government if they didn't get their way entire but cooler heads prevailed that time. Those same heads lost it when their "genius" Representative Paul Ryan came out with his budget for 2012.
This was a wishlist of every thing the Republicans have wanted to do ever since the South went from solid Democratic to pretty-solid Republican. Make Medicare into a voucher-like system instead of the single payer system it is now, cut back Social Security, defund NPR, Planned Parenthood and even more like cutting food stamps and school lunches. Now, it would have been bad enough for them if this budget abomination had just stayed in the realm of "proposed" but they had to go that one more step and go ahead and pass it in the House.
Oops.
Big boo boo. Now there's actual votes to have to defend to the folks back home. No denying that or saying you really meant to do something else there.
The Republicans are now getting a taste of what they try so hard to avoid: reality. The new Tea Bag members of the House are holding town halls while they're off and instead of friendly crowds shouting down pesky liberals they're finding they are the ones being shouted at and not in a good way. Why, their "courageous" Rep. Ryan even got BOOED by a home district crowd.
Knowing the Republicans, they'll ignore even these clear signals and go even further with their policies.
Election night 2012 just might be a lot more fun than the one in 2010 was.Posted by James Frye at 1:41 PM
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