"Economist" writes about Pakistani education system.
Pakistan's real educational battlefield, however, is less in its madrassas than in its rotten mainstream schools and universities. In the absence of a decent education, points out Javed Ashraf Qazi, the education minister, “illiterate masses become ready recruits for all sorts of unhealthy activities.” Perhaps recognising this, America has not wasted a dime on madrassa reform. But it has pledged $256m for mainstream education between 2002 and 2007.Officially, 53% of Pakistanis are literate. Others say the figure is nearer 30%. Literacy, often defined as no more than the ability to write one's name, is as low as 3% among women in some rural areas. Pakistan has a rapidly ballooning population of 160m with over 85m people below the age of 19. The education system, left to atrophy for 30 years, is crippled by every possible ill: crumbling classrooms, poor teaching materials, untrained and truant teachers and endemic corruption.http://www.economist.com/world/asia/...ory_id=8975454But the good news ends there. Poorer provinces have been unable to cash in. Baluchistan, blighted by a low-level separatist insurgency, has been able to increase spending by only 20-30%. Across Pakistan as a whole, only 52% of primary-school-age pupils attend school. Of those, nearly one-third will drop out. Only 22% of girls above the age of ten complete primary schooling, compared with 47% of boys.
Some 3,500 schools do not have a building; of those that do, 4,000 are classed as “dangerous”; 29,000 schools have no electricity; 14,000 have no drinking water; 22,000 do not have a toilet; 4,000 consist of a single classroom; and fewer than 100 secondary schools have science labs. The quality of education is still poor, and the government is far off its target of providing universal primary education by 2015.
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