Putting the governments’ rhetoric and investments in gimmicks (laptops) aside, education standards continue to decline in Pakistan.

The recently released Pakistan Economic Survey (2014-15) depicts a sorry of state of education standards in Pakistan. Instead of an increase in literacy and education quality, the survey documents a decline in both the numbers and quality.

Literacy rate at 58 per cent in 2013-14 was lower than it was a year earlier. The gender gap in literacy persisted – in fact, worsened in some instances – while five-year old children performed worse in academic standards in 2014 than they did earlier.

Even with faltering literacy metrics, education fails to be a priority for the government. Allocating it less than two per cent of the GDP, Pakistan continues to spend much less on education than its neighbours do, when it actually needs to invest much more to beat the vicious circle of disease, poverty, and violence.

See: No budget increase for education ministry, HEC

According to the Pakistan Economic Survey, the nation faltered on almost all things that mattered.

The economy did not grow as planned (it never did so in the past). The Survey also exposed the decline in the nation’s human and social capital. Instead of going up, the literacy rate went down. Instead of going down, the gender gap in education went up. Instead of children becoming able to read and write at the expected levels, we see them regressing.

With education now being a provincial mandate, the responsibility to improve literacy rests with the provincial governments. With this information in hand, a responsible government would have acted with the resolve to reverse the decline and dedicate resources to improve primary education.

The federal government continues to fund tertiary education and has the responsibility to help the provinces meet the national commitment for literacy, especially for girls in rural and remote parts.

The federal budget, released earlier in June, however seems oblivious to the collapsing education standards. Instead of reacting to its own findings by structuring programs to incentivise the provinces to reverse the decline, the federal budget maintains the status quo. It allocates Rs75.6 billion to education, a 17 per cent year-over-year increase.

Yet, the amount dedicated to primary education services (Rs 7.24 billion) is hardly 10 per cent of the federal spending on education, and has not increased proportionally from the previous years.

Source: Federal Budget 2015-16. Budget in Brief.

Faltering foundations

How can one explain that while other nations are investing in education to improve literacy and human capital of their workforce, Pakistan’s literacy rate is falling? The Economic Survey reported that the literacy rate in 2013-14 to be 58 per cent, two percentage points lower than the year before. In fact, the literacy rate has remained at the same level since 2010.

It is hard to imagine the misguided priorities of a nation in which 42 per cent of the people cannot read or write their names and 6.7 million school-aged children do not attend school. The fact that Pakistan spends 10-times more on military and weapons than it does on schooling its young, partially explains the continued decline in human capital.

The national literacy rate hides the extreme disparities that exist between regions and provinces. Whereas 71 per cent of 10-year or older males in Punjab can read or write their names (the threshold for literacy in Pakistan), only 59 per cent of those in Balochistan can do the same.

Even worse are the gender disparities. Nationally, 70 per cent of the men (10-years and older) can read and write their names compared to 47 per cent of women. In Balochistan, only one in four women are literate. In KP, the situation is not much better, with only one in three women being literate.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif encourages the provincial governments to raise the spending on education to 3.2 per cent of the GDP in the interim and up to four per cent of the GDP by the end of provincial governments’ tenure.

There is, however, a problem: The provincial governments are not incented to comply, especially when they know that education had not been a priority for the feds when it was a federal subject.

There are no shortcuts to a healthy and prosperous future for Pakistan. There are choices though.

One can prioritise investing in either weapons or books. Without education and basic literacy, especially amongst women, Pakistan will continue to struggle with disease, poverty, and violence. Education is the only way out of this mess.