Education sector facing serious challenges

Islamabad: Former federal minister for education Zubaida Jalal has said that the education sector in Pakistan is facing serious challenges to accommodate parents perspective on education which might include easy access to quality education de-politicisation of the education system and provision of basic facilities for education in far-flung areas of Pakistan. Ms Jalal was speaking at a discussion forum marking the start of the Global Action Week by the Girls Education Alliance Pakistan here.Zubaida Jalal said that a huge sum of monetary support was being provided to Pakistan by different donor organisations and countries but unfortunately no efforts were being made to consolidate the information and develop a holistic picture for an effective analysis and quality input. Haroona Jatoi an educationist said that it was the responsibility of the federal and provincial governments to create an enabling environment for promotion of girls education which could only be achieved if devolution of power to local level was ensured. Daud Saqlain from ActionAid Pakistan said that the alliance needed to focus on a single point agenda for policy advocacy campaigning. He said that gender responsive education financing was the key area, which required immediate attention for enhancing the access to quality education. He said that rural areas of Pakistan were lagging far behind in terms of both access to and quality of educationSaeed-ul-Hassan from Oxfam said that the political parties, after one-year of their being in the government needed to be reminded of the pledges they made to the public during their election campaigns. He said that the civil society should rally public support in exerting pressure on provincial and federal governments to improve the access to quality education particularly for girls. Mukhtar Pasha from Care International said that there is need to synergise the efforts and resources for effective policy and decision-making. Iffat Jamil from Plan International said that the alliance members needed to bring in peoples perspective to their efforts as all of them were working in different parts of the country. Azhar Lashari from Rural Development Policy Institute said that promoting the concept of citizenship was integral to enhancing access to and quality of education. Mukhtar Ahmed, a representative of Punjab government said that there were numerous loopholes in education system of Pakistan which required analysis and improvement.