Pakistan’s Education Crisis: - The Real Story - by Nadia Naviwala

The Wilson Center’s Asia Program, mindful of the serious nature of Pakistan’s education crisis and the troubling implications it poses for the country, has addressed this issue numerous times over the last 11 years—culminating in products that included a book in 2005 and a major conference in 2014. [...] Increased Islamicization of the system in the 1980s coincided with the growth of private schooling and a preference for international high school qualifications through the Cambridge system over the national metric system. [...] According to the World Bank: “A higher percentage of GDP spent on education shows a higher government priority for education, but also a higher capacity of the government to raise revenues for public spending, in relation to the size of the country’s economy.”41 Pakistan raises only 9 percent of its GDP in taxes. [...] DFID decided not to work with the provincial government in 2012 because they questioned the political sincerity of the government in pursuing reform: “Given political uncertainties about the depth of the government’s commitment to reform 20 PAKISTAN’S EDUCATION CRISIS and the lack of a comprehensive plan for the education sector, we do not believe it is feasible to fund the government directly…. [...] Despite extremely poor student achievement test results THE REAL STORY 23 there is no debate to institute even a marginal level of accountability for the education managers and the teaching cadre.”127 Having a transformative impact and multiplying the impact of funding requires getting involved in the local politics of the sector.