A few years back, the United States of America came up with the catch phrase “No child left behind” and the United Kingdom “Every child matters” to ensure their education systems were providing the same quality of education to every child in their respective countries.

It was also an effort by both countries to make certain that every child reached a certain benchmark of attainment in their schooling. By doing so, the state guaranteed that the scales of justice were evenly poised for all children and the underprivileged as well as the rich were provided the same standard of education.

Furthermore, a transparent monitoring system to oversee maintenance of standards across the board for all categories of citizens became an integral part of the education systems of these countries.

On a worldwide scale, the same principle was highlighted by the World Education Forum at a meeting in Dakar, Senegal, in April 2000. The member states reiterated that education is a fundamental human right and key to narrowing the gap between rich and poor societies which are rapidly being affected by globalisation. Thus, every young person must receive an education to meet their basic learning needs to improve their lives and effectively participate in the societies and economies of the 21st Century.

The watchword “Education for All” (EFA) was adopted by the forum and had to be urgently applied to meet the learning needs of all children. Pakistan is a signatory to the EFA goals to ensure that all children are in school by 2015. Although some effort towards this goal has been made with low cost schools being provided by the government under the banner of Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) and Sindh Education Foundation (SEF), Pakistan is lagging behind.

According to data collected by Unesco’s Institute of Statistics for 2010-2011, 5.7 million children are still out of school in Pakistan, the second largest number after Nigeria. Moreover, the worrying factor is that despite concerted efforts by NGOs, government sector reforms and citizen initiatives in the private sector, the poor sections of society are being segregated by being provided education in separate schools.

This dire situation on the ground today is due to the fact that over the past four decades, Pakistan’s government has given scant attention to educating its population. Apart from a minimum allocation of the national budget, the attempts at upgrading and expanding its school structure has not been seriously tackled. Primarily, reforms were undertaken to either plug a gap or to fix one pressing aspect or another over the past so many years. When schools were nationalised in the 1970s to make education affordable to all, infrastructural reforms were not undertaken on a massive scale to add more classrooms, teachers, administrators and libraries for the additional students.

The result was a lowering of educational standards which eventually deteriorated into ‘rote learning’. Politically expedient reforms such as the ‘Nai Roshni Schools’ to educate working children in the evenings were not sustained by the next government in power. Instead of making English the medium of instruction for all schools or vice versa for Urdu, government schools were mandated to start teaching English language from Class 1 without a whole host of English language teachers being made available to give quality instruction in the language. Finally, to equalise opportunity for a select number of disadvantaged students, a few Danish Schools on the pattern of Aitchison College were set up in the Punjab province (the other three provinces were left out of this scheme) to provide education at par with elitist schools.

These piecemeal reforms rather than a system wide reform based on a five-year or 10-year plan resulted in Pakistan having perhaps the largest variety of schools than any other country in the world. In Pakistan, there are state-run government schools including vocational and technical schools that educate four out of five school-going children and a burgeoning private sector since the 1980s that offers education to those who can afford fees. The NGO schools, madressahs and innumerable charitable schools run by private citizens cater just to the socially disadvantaged while institutions like the Army, Air Force and Navy run subsidised schools for their own personnel. This has eventually ended up creating a firm divide between those who can afford substantial fees for a high-end education and those who cannot afford it ending up getting a lower standard of education.

While South Africa and the USA abandoned segregated schools for white and black peoples decades ago, Pakistan’s education system is ostensibly acquiring the features of an apartheid system. Schools are either those who only the rich can afford, with a higher standard of education, or those that cater to the poor and do not have the resources or expertise to impart the same level of education. The long-term effect of this diversity in schooling standards has resulted in a class-conscious society with marked differences in thinking, lifestyles, language deficits and fixed world views among its various groups.

This, sadly, runs counter to Pakistan’s claim that its governance is based on the Islamic principles of social justice and equality. Moreover, the emphasis on ‘rote learning’ in the last few decades has produced a populace which lacks research-oriented and thinking skills that are needed to transform society in the present century.

Focus on “Education for All” means educational standards are the same for all sections of society without discrimination. Thus, Pakistan’s assortment of schools must develop uniformity in educational standards to fully realise EFA goals on an emergency basis.

The writer is an educational consultant based in Lahore. Ismatriaz70@gmail.com