Pakistan’s Stagnated Education system

Pakistan Women’s Foundation for Peace held a seminar ‘A Holistic Approach to Improve Pakistan’s Stagnated Education System’ recently. Panelists included Dr Shahid Siddiqui, Dr Sarosh Hashmat Lodi, Dr Ishrat Hussain and Nargis Rehman, Chairperson PWFEP. All the participants felt that Pakistan’s stagnant system could be revitalized and yield high outcome provided that there was a will to make it a priority to be activated in the chambers of the power holders in Pakistan and in collective ownerships of its citizens.

The objective for holding the seminar was to seek consensus on the solutions forwarded by the experts in the field of education on the problems that assail Pakistan’s education system since 1947. Today Pakistan’s education system suffers a very, demeaning rank in international education/literacy indices at approx. 60 percent, now the lowest in the region! A consistent rank over a period of 15 years! This is acknowledged in the education emergency declared by the PM in May 2024, and the setting up of a Task Force which is mandated to make recommendations for educational projects.

 Nargis Rahman said the focus of education problems identified by the task force in August 2024 were infrastructure, access to schooling, inclusion, low learning outcomes, teacher shortage, governance, management and bureaucratic turnover. Pakistan Women’s Foundation for Peace has held two seminars to understand why education languishes in a state of endemic crises despite so many plans and expensive policy initiatives starting from the year 1947 to the year 2024.