THE Punjab government has enforced the Education Emergency Ordinance in the province with immediate effect. Now it is mandatory [for parents] to ensure enrolment of their children between the ages of five to 16. … Schools will have to admit 10pc poor and needy children … the head of a school will undergo six months’ imprisonment with a fine of Rs50,000 in case a child’s name is found missing in the record of the school concerned.

The Punjab government has ambitiously experimented with novel ideas to promote education … from [the distribution of] laptops to [the establishment of] Daanish schools, experimentation has been going on. Some years ago, English was declared the medium of instruction but the decision was reversed. Had any of the novel ideas worked, the whole population of Punjab would have been educated. …

It seems the education emergency has been enforced in haste. There is no harm if it was essential to [do so] to get a foreign grant. Otherwise, how can merely making enrolment of children mandatory and punishing headmasters for ‘missing children’ promote education? … A high literacy rate can only be achieved by making the mother language the medium of instruction. But the provincial government is not ready to consider the Punjabi language … perhaps it is allergic to Punjabi. …

— (May 16)Selected and translated by Zaheer Mahmood Siddiqui.

Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2014