Under constitutional changes introduced in April 2010, education has now become a right for all Pakistanis under the age of 16. But the country is still lagging far behind its South Asian neighbours; a 2011 report on the state of Pakistan’s education found that in contrast to India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, Pakistan has no chance of reaching the UN’s Millennium Development Goals for education by 2015. Millions of children are still out of school and many teachers don’t bother showing up at government run schools. However today efforts are underway to solve this education emergency.

Alif Ailaan, a Pakistani-led alliance for education reform, collaborated with the Rural Support Programmes Network (RSPN) in April this year to start a pilot project called “Mobilising communities to demand education (Article 25 A) and local accountability” in 56 union councils of seven districts of Pakistan (four in Punjab and three in KP).

Article 25 A of the Constitution of Pakistan focuses on the Right to Education and states: “The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children between the age of five to 16 years in such a manner as may be determined by law”. The pilot project is currently being implemented by the RSPN (who designed it) through its partner RSPs, the National Rural Support Programme and the Sarhad Rural Support Programme, by involving Local Support Organisations (LSOs). The LSOs are the culmination of a three-tier social mobilisation strategy fostered by the RSPs that begins at the household level. Local women and men join community level organisations, which then choose representatives for village level organisations, which in turn select members for the LSO, which covers the entire union council. Women are included and they actively participate at all three levels; the idea is for the local people to come together and find solutions to their problems, whether it is lack of clean drinking water in their area or government schools that are not being run properly.

An LSO that calls itself HUM (Human Unity Movement) is currently running the project from their office in Hattar, an industrial area in District Haripur. There are over a hundred industrial units located in the Union Council of Hattar, that are producing food, beverage, textile, crockery, cement, etc. Most of the local people work for these units. “Thanks to Alif Ailaan more people have started sending their children to school. The teachers have also started teaching properly. The local community has taken up the issue of quality education and the government’s education department is now trying to improve things,” says Nasreen Sheikh, RSPN’s Education Campaign Manager for the project. Even the local Maulvi Sahib agrees, “This is good work, it should continue; it is good for the country.”

The project works by mobilising rural communities to become aware of Article 25 A and to put pressure on local politicians and influential people for the implementation of their “Right to Education”. The project also establishes a community-based mechanism for local accountability for improvement in school conditions and increase in enrolment. Community Resource Persons (CRPs) have been appointed to create awareness amongst the rural communities regarding Article 25 A.

Afshan Bibi is a very active CRP from nearby Shadi village, who collects data on behalf of the project on who is going to school and who is not in her area. She also monitors Parent Teacher Committees (PTC), which are the links between the government and community and need to be strengthened. “I discovered that four children were not in school — they had come from Swabi with their parents. I had meetings with the parents and the teachers at the local school and we managed to get two of them admitted after obtaining the relevant certificates. I am still talking to the parents of the other two. Many of these parents are very poor and can’t afford uniforms/shoes/stationary. We have made the PTC more active as well. There were complaints of a teacher hitting the children and I went to talk to her. The teachers have to answer to the public. If the community has any complaints about the teachers they come to us and we go to the school.”

The LSO members have already met with their local Member of the Parliamentary Assembly, MPA Raja Faisel from the PML-N and he has pledged full support to the Alif Ailaan campaign. He has even put up their banner, which says that “Education is the right of every child”, in his hujra so that whenever anyone comes to see him for any demand, he can say to them “where is your demand for education?” According to Iftikhar Younus, an old school teacher who has been teaching in Hattar since 1974, “This approach is very good. I am surprised that people are now thinking about the education sector — it has been neglected for so long.”

Alif Ailaan is still making small steps but that is how all movements begin. Teachers have become alert now and they know they can be held accountable by parents. LSOs now have regular meetings with school management committees and school teachers to discuss with them the proper utilisation of the funds allocated for each school and to ensure the attendance of the teachers in schools. In the near future, a District Education Network (DEN) comprising LSOs and local non-governmental organisations working on education will be established to engage in advocacy with the Department of Education and others for improvement in school conditions. School by school, district by district, Pakistan’s education emergency is finally being addressed.