THE recent claims of Punjab officials about the provincial government’s proposed education plans are hard to believe because, in the past five years, action has never matched the official rhetoric.

The government so far has relied on publicity gimmicks instead of doing solid work to improve the education sector.

Punjab’s Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif launched a campaign some time ago called Jahalat se Azadi (freedom from ignorance). The provincial government also unveiled its ‘education emergency’ plan in order to improve enrolment at schools in primary classes. However, each year, the education development budget was slashed to build roads and buildings.

During the last fiscal year (2012-13) an amount of Rs25 billion was allocated to education development, but only Rs10.6bn was actually spent — merely 40pc of what was promised with much fanfare at the time of presenting the annual budget.

In the same fiscal budget, the provincial government set aside a paltry amount of Rs915 million for improving literacy (as part of the education budget) but spent only Rs323m — one-third of the original allocation. Punjab has an official literacy rate of 60pc.

From fiscal 2010-11 to 2012-13, as per official figures, the Punjab government allocated a cumulative amount of Rs72.3bn for education development, but spent just about half of it — Rs37.1bn. In contrast, the government spent Rs76bn on building roads during the same period. Obviously, top on the priority list was physical infrastructure.

In fiscal 2012-13, the chief minister spent a huge discretionary amount of Rs20bn (called ‘below-the-line’ expenditure in official jargon) — twice what was spent on education development. This year, he has Rs50bn as discretionary allocation as against Rs25.4bn for education development, according to the provincial government’s white paper on budget 2013-14.

On the education front, the rulers indulged in publicity gimmicks. The chief minister distributed generous cash awards to top scorers in the matriculation and intermediate examinations and sent position-holders in higher secondary exams on foreign trips, thus consuming the budget of the examination boards which pushed the latter into a financial mess.

At present, there are 7,000 government-run girls’ schools in the province with only one teacher per school, and 9,000 girls’ schools with only four teachers per school. A large number of public schools are housed in two-room buildings.

For the last several years, thousands of teaching posts in public schools in Punjab have been lying vacant and almost half of 62,000 public schools are missing basic facilities such as rooms, boundary walls, drinking water and toilets, as per official statistics.

In these circumstances, this year, the government has announced another scheme that will cost it millions of rupees. It is set to provide scooters to some college girls for free. This year, as a pilot project, the scooters will be distributed in Rawalpindi where the ruling party faced electoral defeat at the hands of Imran Khan.

The PML-N leadership believes in spending public money on new projects which bear its signature, such as the Motorway, Lahore Metro Bus, Danish schools, laptops etc, but it has left the existing infrastructure to decay.

During the last two years, the Punjab government blew billions of rupees on projects such as the distribution of free laptops among university students and the establishment of the Danish boarding schools.

In comparison, last year, the budget for providing missing facilities to ordinary schools was cut down from Rs8bn to Rs2bn. This year again, the Punjab government will spend Rs3bn on the distribution of laptops among university students and the federal government Rs4bn for the same purpose.

The Danish schools provide education to around 26,000 students while more than 11 million children go to public schools. Since Danish schools bear the stamp of Shahbaz Sharif, their development budget exceeds the development expenditure of ordinary schools.

On the other hand, the government has not been able to reconstruct and rehabilitate thousands of public schools inundated by the 2010 flooding. These are skewed priorities.

The lack of basic facilities at public schools is one of the major reasons behind the low enrolment rate.

Under the education emergency slogan, the government’s thrust is on enhancing the enrolment in primary schools to 100pc.

Making children spend some time at school will not prove very helpful unless the currently pathetic quality of education in most public schools is reversed and measures taken to improve matters. The teacher-student ratio in public schools is so high that teachers can hardly be blamed for poor standards.

If the goals of ‘education for all’ and quality education are to be achieved, as the official propaganda goes, the rulers will have to stop hoodwinking the public through publicity stunts and genuinely reorder their development priorities.

The PML-N government needs to keep its election promise of increasing the education budget to 4pc of GDP from its present level of 1.86pc. The announcements being made by the Punjab government, even if they materialise, fall way short of what is required to put public education back on track.

The writer is a freelance journalist and researcher.

adnanadilzaidi@gmail.com