ISLAMABAD, May 13: Speakers at a seminar here on Tuesday said low budgetary allocations and their inappropriate use were responsible for poor education standard in the country.

They were speaking at a seminar “Pre-budget policy dialogue on education” organised by the Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (ISPS) and Campaign for Quality Education (CQE).

The speakers said persistent inadequacy of education budgets was reflected in underinvestment in education sector, absence of policy levers to determine resource allocation and incremental budgeting detached from education management information system.

Missing budget lines, delays in disbursement, poor spending capacities at the federal, provincial and district levels and lack of transparency had served to aggravate the crisis, they added.

In addition to the problem of low public spending, the system appeared not even to have the capacity to fully utilise whatever meagre resources were allocated, they said, adding that after decades of reforms Pakistan still ranked very low as only 60 per cent children have access to schools, of which 30 per cent could make it to fifth grade, 10 per cent to middle level, 6.7 to secondary level. And only 0.6 per cent make to higher education.

Educational justice entailed not only access to schools but includes provision of quality education for which attention was needed for the betterment of infrastructure as 16 per cent of the public schools were shelter-less and 39 per cent have no drinking water, the speakers said.

Pakistan continues to be counted among the countries with low spending on education and to make matters worse it lacks the capacity to spend what was available, they added.

“There was a clear prima facie argument for increasing the education budget but it needs to be further strengthened by tracking the budgetary process and examining its strengths and weaknesses, which cannot be done given the inability of the stakeholders to track education budgets,” the speakers said.

These problems are undermining the citizens’ access to quality education as a fundamental human right, besides limiting Pakistan’s capacity to meet international obligations, they said.

Although the relevance of public spending patterns to educational outcomes is widely recognised, there still remains a deficit of public deliberations on these issues. This is reflected in the absence of informed policy debate on solving the problems of allocation, spending and tracking associated with the overall budgetary processes, they said.

“System does not seem to be responding to the stimulus of increased funding expenditure and problems including governance crisis, besides lack of coordination among policy makers and implementers also remain there,” they noted.

Data, policies and budgeting remain isolated; this lack of collaboration within the departments has affected the whole process adversely.

Education data has very little link with polices since decision making is not data based. Data compiled by government departments aims at portraying a good picture rather then identifying the core issues and working for improvement, they said.

The experts also proposed a set of recommendations for effective education budget tracking by parliamentarians, members of relevant standing committees, media and civil society.

The speakers included Salman Hamyun, executive director ISPS, Abbas Rashid, CQE, Razi Abbas, secretary finance, Dr Pervaiz Tahir, professor of economics GCU Lahore, Dr Fayaz Ahmed, ministry of education and Muhammad Sabbih, principal economist SDPC.