KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah reiterated in the budget speech on Friday his government’s resolve to bring all children to schools and provide them quality education but the funds allocated for the education sector gave the lie to his claim.

Of a total budget of Rs686.18 billion, Rs145.02 billion (21.13 per cent) has been set aside for education, about Rs10 billion up from last year’s Rs135.55 billion.

The budget puts aside Rs134.32 billion for current expenditures, which is up from Rs118.66 billion in 2013-14 budget and allocation for development is Rs10.7 billion, which is less than last year’s Rs16.88 billion.

In 2013-14 also, funds had been kept aside for the establishment of comprehensive schools in all districts. This year, too, Rs550 million has been allocated for the ‘comprehensive schools’, which shows the government failed to set up the schools last year.

The new budget allocates Rs500 million for information and communication technologies-enabled Education Management Information System. The same amount had been set aside in last year’s budget as well.

Further plans include another project of the establishment of 23 English medium schools in all districts for which Rs1.25 billion has been allocated; establishment and promotion of engineering colleges in Khairpur and Larkana; law colleges in Hala, Dadu and Lyari; a girls’ cadet college in Shaheed Benazirabad, Larkana, and a girls’ degree college in Naudero along with cadet colleges in Dadu, Mithi and Khairpur.

Meanwhile, the government announced a 10 per cent increase in salaries across the board with a raise in fixed medical allowances (grade 1-15), conveyance allowance (grade 1-15) and one premature increment for grade 1-4.

About the second phase of Sindh Education Reform Programme for which the World Bank had agreed to provide US $400 million for a period of four years till June 2017, the chief minister pointed out that the project’s objective was to raise school participation by improving sector governance and accountability and strengthening administrative systems, and measure student achievement.

For this, among other things, the government had kept funds for the creation of 2,000 posts of head masters and head mistresses, he said.

The state of education in Sindh, according to Alif Ailaan, an NGO, has declined so much that half of all children in the province do not go to school.

The government’s education system is inadequate and imbalanced. Some 91 per cent of the 47,394 government schools are primary schools and only one per cent of them are higher secondary schools. Then there are more schools in places with far few children, it said.

The dropout rate of children is quite high because of poor facilities and inadequate infrastructure. Some schools do not have toilets and drinking water facility, some do not have electricity while others do not even have boundary walls.

The conditions keep parents, especially of girls, from sending their children to school, hence out of total number of children not in school 56pc are girls.

There is obviously a more serious need to resolve these problems than to increase salaries of teachers. “Pakistan has 25 million children out of school. Increasing the salaries of teachers who are already relatively well compensated while cutting money for new schools makes sense only in an absurd context,” said Mosharraf Zaidi, Campaign Leader for Alif Ailaan.

“These budgets are proof that all parties and all leaders in Pakistan find the cheap route of symbolic budget increases easier than real change,” he concluded.

Published in Dawn, June 14th, 2014