THERE are four big problems that we have to resolve if we are serious about addressing issues linked to education in Pakistan. First of all, there are an estimated 20 to 25 million children between five to 16 years who are not in school. We have, under Article 25a, which has been included in the Constitution through the 18th Amendment, pledged that all children in this age group will be provided free and compulsory education as a basic right. If we are to live up to that promise, we have to figure out a way of getting these millions of children into school.

Secondly, education for children enrolled in school has to be of at least some minimum standard. We have solid evidence provided by various private and government studies that the level of education currently being imparted is generally of low quality. Most of the public sector is in bad shape and the bulk of the private sector, especially the low-fee sector to which some 40pc of enrolled children gravitate, is also imparting education that is of poor quality.

The Annual Status of Education Report for this year as well as for previous years clearly shows the abysmal state of learning that is the lot of most of our children. There is little point in bringing children to school if we are not going to give them a certain quality of education. We need our students to not only have functional skills, including language and mathematics skills, we also want them to become useful citizens of Pakistan. If education fails to equip students to achieve this status, it is of little benefit to them, their families or the country.

Third, equity issues should be a major concern for us. Inequality, by most accounts, is and has been increasing in Pakistan over the last three decades at least. Policies of liberalisation, privatisation and decentralisation have a tendency to increase inequality if the state does not invest in progressive taxation, safety nets and merit-based systems of education. With the introduction and expansion of the sector for the private provision of education and a clear decline in public-sector education, where education is supposed to contribute to merit-based equality generating income mobility, the result is entrenchment and increasing inequalities.

There is substantial circumstantial evidence to justify focus on the issue of inequality in education.

This seems to be happening in Pakistan too. And though there is no rigorous research evidence, there is substantial circumstantial evidence to justify focus on the issue of inequality/inequity.

Fourth, though we are spending only about 2pc of GDP on education and we need to spend at least 4pc to 5pc to get the results we want, we are clearly not dealing efficiently with the resources currently being spent on education. Most public-sector expenditure on education goes towards the salaries of teachers. But there are still too many ghost schools, non-functional or barely functional schools, too many teachers do not show up for work still, and many are not prepared to teach or are not motivated enough to teach if they do show up. All this adds to the inefficiency in our system.

Almost all provincial governments have increased resources for education in their recently presented budgets. But the increases have been marginal: in the 10pc to 15pc range in nominal terms. So, in real terms the increases have been minimal. But all provincial governments, even before the current budgets, were spending about 25pc of their budgets on education. Clearly there is little or no additional space in provincial budgets for increasing allocations for education.

If money for education has to increase, new resources will have to be generated for it. But on that count the recent budgets have been a disappointment. None of the provinces have given ideas on new taxes, on how to broaden the base of existing taxes or on bringing new taxpayers into the net. They have, instead, relied on just tinkering with existing taxes and rates to further milk those who are already in the net. The potential for land tax, property tax, agriculture income tax remains untapped and unexplored.

At the federal level too, the problems are the same. We raise only about 9pc of our GDP in the form of tax revenue. Can we spend almost half of it on education? Even though the government has promised that it will reach the target of 4pc of GDP by 2017 or so, this is not going to happen without major changes to the tax structure, to how the taxes are levied and without determining who pays taxes.

The salaried classes are overtaxed and continue to be milked while traders, small to medium businessmen and land owners continue to cruise and do not pay or pay very few taxes. Reform of the Federal Board of Revenue remains a dream and the institution continues to be a corrupt, inefficient and ineffective institution.

The additional resources, whatever the hype about donors and their contributions, cannot come in the form of aid or grants. Aid has never been a large percentage of the overall education budgets. And donors prefer spending on the development side whereas most of the expenditure in education is on recurrent costs (salaries).

There has been some discussion of education budgets in the papers recently. It has largely been about praising provincial governments for raising money for education and praise or censure for doing better or worse than other provinces and other political parties. But most of these changes in the budgets have been cosmetic. Our problems, in education, are very large and very significant. They require equally substantial responses. But these budgets, federal or provincial, have not even made an attempt to address these issues or provide the framework in which these concerns can be addressed in the years ahead.

The writer is senior adviser, Pakistan, at Open Society Foundations, associate professor of economics, LUMS, and a visiting fellow at IDEAS, Lahore.

Published in Dawn, July 4th, 2014