Education budget 2009-10 up by Rs 7 bn. Mixed response

Education budget 2009-10 up by Rs 7 bn. Mixed response
Allocation for education up by Rs 7 bn
Islamabad, June 15: The federal government has allocated an amount of Rs 31.6 billion for the education sector in the national budget for the year 2009-10 compared to Rs 24.4 billion earmarked in the previous year.

Arguing that non-state actors can address the challenges of educating the Pakistani youth is like arguing that sticks and stones are effective weapons in the face of nuclear war. The idea of non-state actors as the saviours of education in Pakistan is a fairy tale, and reasonable adults need to snap out of it. non-state actors simply cannot do what is required to educate Pakistan. The scale and scope of the education challenge can only be addressed by the state. It doesn't matter how good reading Three Cups of Tea makes us feel, or how good donating money to our favourite philanthropic school makes us feel, or how good sending our children to private schools makes us feel. The education debate cannot be about how good we feel. If we are to spare only one area in Pakistan of our overwhelming capacity to be emotional and irrational, it has to be education

Solutions are needed at three distinct levels - determining correct funding priorities, implementing approved plans and projects responsibly, and, most importantly, inducing changes in values to promote and enable real learning.Current spending priorities are the haphazard expression of individual whims, not actual needs. For example, most Pakistani students in higher education (about 0.8 million) study in about 700 colleges. These colleges receive pitifully small funding compared to universities. During 2001-2004, the funds annually allocated to colleges averaged a miserable sum of Rs 0.48 billion and the spending per college student was only one sixth that for a university student. Subsequently this has become worse. It is no surprise then that public colleges are in desperate shape with dilapidated buildings, broken furniture, and laboratory and library facilities that exist only in name.Meanwhile, many public universities are awash in funds. They have gone on a shopping binge for all kinds of gadgetry - fax machines, fancy multimedia projectors, and electricity-guzzling airconditioners. But it would be hard to argue that any of this has served to improve teaching quality even marginally.

Public Schools: Education Problems and Solutions

Public schools are government schools for kindergarten, elementary and secondary education in the United States, sponsored by public taxes that provide free local education. They focus on the general education basics and is controlled by school authority. Public schools are local and affordable institutes and accessible to all children. A detailed study on the Public schools, education problems and suggestions to be implemented in education sector are depicted below.

Solutions for Educational System: Estimating the value of education, the Government should take solid steps on this issue. Implementation instead of projecting policies, should be focused on. Allocation of funds should be made easy from provinces to districts and then to educational institutes. Workshops must be arranged for teachers. Foreign states are using LSS system. This should be inducted in Pakistani schools to improve the hidden qualities of children. Technical education must be given to all the classes. The education board of Punjab have projected a plan to give tech- education to the children of industrial workers. Promotion of the primary education is the need of time. Teachers, professors and educationists should be consulted while devising any plan, syllabus or policy. The state seems to give up her responsibility and totally relying on private sector. The need of time is to bring education in its original form to masses. Burdening a students with so much books will not work as he will not understand what the world is going to do next moment. Education is the only cure of the destability in the state and can bring revolution through

Solutions for Educational System: Estimating the value of education, the Government should take solid steps on this issue. Implementation instead of projecting policies, should be focused on. Allocation of funds should be made easy from provinces to districts and then to educational institutes. Workshops must be arranged for teachers. Foreign states are using LSS system. This should be inducted in Pakistani schools to improve the hidden qualities of children. Technical education must be given to all the classes. The education board of Punjab have projected a plan to give tech- education to the children of industrial workers. Promotion of the primary education is the need of time. Teachers, professors and educationists should be consulted while devising any plan, syllabus or policy. The state seems to give up her responsibility and totally relying on private sector. The need of time is to bring education in its original form to masses. Burdening a students with so much books will not work as he will not understand what the world is going to do next moment. Education is the only cure of the destability in the state and can bring revolution through

Government teachers are far better compensated than non-state teachers. There are some egregious examples of poor pay for private school teachers all over the country, but to demonstrate the point, we must take the best examples within the non-state space. Among the best examples of how to do things right is The Citizens Foundation (TCF). As I reported last week, TCF has done an exemplary job in establishing over 600 schools with over 80,000 students. It has more than 4,100 wonderful and committed female teachers. The average compensation for a TCF teacher is about Rs10,000.
Average government teacher salaries are dramatically higher. Researchers at the Institute for Social and Policy Sciences in Islamabad have calculated average primary school teachers' salaries at Rs12,000, average middle school teachers' salaries at Rs15,000 and average high school teachers' salaries at Rs19,000.

Of the almost 28 million kids that are in school, nearly 19 million, or two-thirds, attend government schools. That means that all the non-state providers put together (anything other than the public sector, including madressahs, by the way) cater to only 9.1 million kids. That is 33 per cent of all kids that are already in school. Of course, we're more interested in the total population, i.e. every kid between five and 19 being in school. Of the total burden of 70 million kids, non-state educational institutions are serving only 13 per cent of all kids. Thirteen per cent is not a passing grade, not even in fairy tales.
Of course, establishing the need to retain public services in the education sector -- without which 87 per cent of all kids would be left out of school -- is not the end of the discussion; it is just the beginning. The real challenge is to make sure that public service in education is indeed a service, rather than a disservice. That's where the education debate gets interesting, and where it encounters resistance from the government and the feudal and military establishments.

Of the almost 28 million kids that are in school, nearly 19 million, or two-thirds, attend government schools. That means that all the non-state providers put together (anything other than the public sector, including madressahs, by the way) cater to only 9.1 million kids. That is 33 per cent of all kids that are already in school. Of course, we're more interested in the total population, i.e. every kid between five and 19 being in school. Of the total burden of 70 million kids, non-state educational institutions are serving only 13 per cent of all kids. Thirteen per cent is not a passing grade, not even in fairy tales.
Of course, establishing the need to retain public services in the education sector -- without which 87 per cent of all kids would be left out of school -- is not the end of the discussion; it is just the beginning. The real challenge is to make sure that public service in education is indeed a service, rather than a disservice. That's where the education debate gets interesting, and where it encounters resistance from the government and the feudal and military establishments.

When we seek the developments or SOLUTIONS in our education system then we have to modify the typical definition of LITERACY in PAKISTAN

Its time to end buying tones of expensive scientific equipment that at the end of it all, produce only zero citation papers and zero patents. Curiosly after a bunch of projects were exposed as phony, the HEC broke with its past practice and now no longer puts on its websites detailes of HEC- funded projects. It is also time to stop HEC officials and HEC delegates from gallivanting across the globe at public expense on the vaguest of excuses for "fact- finding" mission and conferences.

The idea of making Pak-Europe universities sounds like a wonder full idea. Pakistan would pay for France, Sweden, Italy and some other European countries to help setup, manage and provide professors for new universities in Pakistan. It would be expensive- Pakistan would have to pay full costs, recurrent expenses, and euro level salaries plus 40% markup for all the foreign professors and vice chancellors. But it would still be worth it because the large presence of European professors teaching in these Pakistani universities would ensure good teaching. High standard degrees would subsequently be awarded by institutions in the respective European countries.

We all know the problems of our education system now its time to step forward to solutions. It is a time to implement instead of projecting the policies only. Foreign states are using LCC systems which should also be introduced in Pakistan to polish the hidden guts of our students and to make them able to have confidence on their own selves.