LAHORE, March 15: Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) chairman Raja Muhammad Anwar said at a seminar on “Right to Education” organised by Alif Ailaan, a campaign to end Pakistan's education emergency, on Friday that people demanded that their children be provided quality education near their homes. He said that he had visited across Punjab and found that many primary schools were being run in two rooms that tantamount to multi-grade teaching.

He said the PEF would provide 500,000 vouchers to poor and deserving children in the province in the next five years to help them study free of cost in private schools of their choice.

By 2018, Mr Anwar said, the PEF would provide free educational opportunities to four million out-of-school children. He asked private schools to lend a helping hand in promoting the light of knowledge and open the doors of their institutions to the poor children.

Society for Advancement of Education Executive Director Abbas Rashid said strong political will, planning and resource mobilisation was needed to implement Article 25-A to provide free and compulsory education access to children between 5-16 years of age.

He said the government needed to express its commitment towards providing quality education to children to develop an educated and prosperous Pakistan. Besides ensuring access, Mr Rashid said, providing quality education to children was equally challenging task for any government. “Access to education without quality does not really contribute to the society,” he added.

Jamaat-i-Islami’s Waqas Jafri said the ultimate responsibility of delivering education rested with the government. He said the people in Pakistan were facing an education emergency, which depicted the failure of the state.

Currently, he said, only two-thirds of primary school age children were enrolled in schools in Punjab and among those who attend, almost half of them drop out before completing primary level education. According to official figures, he claimed, the drop-out rate at primary level in Punjab was higher than that in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa.

With elections around the corner, lawyer Rafay Alam said, people must remind the candidates of their responsibilities. He said people were entitled to ask them what they had plans to do to improve literacy and education in Pakistan.

Alif Ailaan’s Imran Khan also spoke on the occasion. Parents, teachers, civil society activists and political representatives were present on the occasion.

Speakers also called upon political parties to express will and commitment to make education priority – in true sense of the word. They demanded that Article 25-A of the 18th Amendment with regard to fundamental right of free and compulsory education for 5-16 years of age children should be implemented through legislation as early as possible.

Speakers said the Islamabad Capital Territory and the Sindh governments had enacted RTE legislation, while the Punjab government could not come up with a legislation to implement Article 25-A.