Long gone are the days when public schools were the home of leading men of society. Long gone are the standards which these schools put forward. Long gone are the values which these schools imparted. And so long gone is the legacy of the schools.
The emergence of private schools, along with a stratum within them like elite, super elite, has caused a downfall of public schools. Need of the hour is to know why public schools have faced such a downfall. To blame one another is utter foolishness. In fact every factor is to be analyzed carefully. Inadequate provision of infrastructure, poorly administrated polices of different governments, conventional syllabus prevalent from our colonial past and many other factors are the causes.
On march 2017 at inaugural Session of first National Graduate Conference at Allama Iqbal Open University Minister of State for Federal Education and Professional Training Engineer Muhammad Baligh ur Rehman said that spending on education as a percentage of GDP has increased to 2.5% in 2016. He said that this spending on education was just 1.9% in 2013.
This is lamenting situation that Pakistan is spending only 2.5 percent of its GDP on education whereas most of developed countries spend 5 to 10 percent of its GDP. Most of this money does not even reach to public schools. And it results in the establishment of private schools especially street schools. Problem of poorly administrated policies is much grievous. In our country there is no hard and fast policy especially when it comes to education sector. People have opened schools in houses and have taken accreditation from boards. There is no proper system of checks and balances. When it comes to the problem of syllabus it is surprising to note that we are still following the conventional methods of learning and teaching. No up gradation has taken place. No serious steps are taken to cater the need of modern time. In order to cope with modernization and its changing trends, revolutionary steps should be taken. It is only possible if we strive hard for this purpose.
Writer is a student of Mass Communication at University of the Punjab. He can be reached at [email protected]
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