EDUCATION AS A STRATEGIC IMPERATIVE

Shanza Khan and Moeed Yusuf

Education lies at the heart of Pakistan’s multiple challenges. If Pakistan is to emerge as a stable, moderate polity able to reap dividends from its burgeoning population it must be able to provide the young and future generations both personal safety and a decent livelihood. This requires relative peace, an environment conducive for economic growth, and a workforce that can power progress. Vital to such a turnaround is a well- educated population. Only through massive quantitative and qualitative gains in education can Pakistan produce the skill set required to drive the economy efficiently and produce a critical mass of well-informed and visionary leadership it so badly needs. Equally important, it is only through high quality, value-neutral education that Pakistan can challenge the salience of the Islamist discourse that threatens to radicalise society and drive youth energies towards destructive—often violent-channels.

This means that education should not only be a development priority but also a strategic one. Pakistan’s education performance is a tale of unfulfilled expectations which has caused disaffection and alienation among vast segments of society. The immediate future needs to be seen as a corrective phase that requires holistic interventions in the education sector. The chapter begins by outlining the conceptual underpinnings of the empirical analysis to follow.

This is followed by consideration of the Pakistani education sector’s performance and implications for society. In the final section concrete steps are identified that can help bring about the required transformation.

Education as an ‘Expectation Builder’

Modern societies grasped the importance of a well-educated polity very early on. In recent decades however, investment in human capacity has become a top priority for international, multinational, and national efforts. Conventional wisdom suggested that education was critical for a society to produce a skilled labour force that could operate as productive members of the economy. Over time, education has increasingly been seen as a force multiplier capable of having a much broader impact—both positive and negative—on societies than merely producing a skilled work force. High 264quality education can provide the means of social mobility and act as a source of contentment to people. It can contribute to peace, drive societal narratives and thus mould the very outlook of communities positively, as well as inculcate a civic sense among citizens. On the other hand, poor educational standards or agenda-driven education can contribute to a sense of alienation and deprivation, lead to internal discord and violence, and channelise societal energies in unproductive directions.

The discussion here draws on the ’expectations’ literature. Education is seen as an ’expectation builder’; it raises anticipations at three distinct stages. To begin with, demand for education creates expectations among parents and children that the state would be able to provide opportunities for acquiring education. Once access to education is provided, consumers begin to expect qualitative improvements. The third stage of expectations stems from the fact that the schooling process itself has attached to it hopes of finding commensurate employment.

The literature talks of ‘unfulfilled expectations’ as a major worry. A failure to fulfill expectations in terms of access to or quality of education could be a function of state incapacity, deliberate policies that exclude certain segments of society, or education content that is ill-suited to the requirements of modern economies and societies. Regardless, it implies that those who miss out are not fit to contribute to the economy optimally. Moreover they tend to feel aggrieved and may become alienated and marginalised from their communities. Alienation, deprivation, and marginalisation of youth are in turn linked to radicalisation and discord. However, the failure of education does not have to be absolute to cause alienation. Particular segments of societies can be at a loss even if the rest of the society is progressing. In fact, the literature argues that feelings of alienation and marginalisation are often harboured when access to opportunities is unequal rather than absent. Discussing young males in particular, Collier (2000, p. 94) supports the relative deprivation hypothesis. Kaplan (1996) concurs with this view, arguing that discrimination against specific segments of society can cause the disadvantaged to resort to violence. Indeed, global studies on the linkage between education and violence point to a correlation between conflict outbreak and persistence and low educational attainment. Countries with the lowest rates of primary school enrolment show greater incidence of conflict. Secondary education is also believed to be inversely related to prevalence of 265internal conflict.

Educational content can also be used deliberately to pursue a particular agenda or create a sense of deprivation among students. Learning materials can emphasise a particular version of history or a worldview that may create an exclusionary and discriminatory mindset. Curricula, learning materials, and teaching methods that promote narrow- minded outlooks and intolerance are least suited to peaceful co-existence. Much too often, communities that have experienced extreme forms of conflicts have had divisive education systems. Rwanda, Nazi Germany, and South Asian countries like Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan are all cases in point.

The problem of perceived alienation or deprivation is compounded in contexts already ridden by violence and extremism. Here, the frustration caused by low educational attainment, agenda-driven content, or a mismatch between education and economic opportunities provide a perfect opportunity for militants to recruit cadres. Grounding the argument in the ’education as an expectation builder’ premise, the following discussion examines the Pakistani case in some detail. It argues that the Pakistani education sector has led to unfulfilled expectations at each of the three mentioned stages: there has been a failure to provide enough education, to provide good quality education, and to provide amicable livelihoods to the educated. Consequently, a vast proportion of the Pakistani population is ill prepared for a modern economy and is vulnerable to internal discord and violence.

Recounting ‘Expectation Failures’ in Pakistani Education

Stage I: Failure to Provide. Pakistan has made progress with regard to most education indicators over time. The total net primary enrolment rate has increased from 33 per cent in 1991 to 66 per cent in 2008. The ratio of female to male primary enrolment has increased from 52 per cent to 83 percent. Meanwhile, the total primary completion rate as a percentage of the relevant age group has risen from 50 percent to 60 per cent in the corresponding period. The total adult literacy rate has also increased from 26 per cent in 1981 to 54 per cent in 2008. Recent developments have yielded somewhat greater progress exemplified by the 266fact that youth literacy at 68.9 per cent is 15 per cent higher than adult literacy.

But progress remains poor both in absolute terms as and relative to the rest of the South Asian region and other lower middle-income developing countries. With the exception of Afghanistan, Pakistan has the lowest education outcomes in the region. Half of Pakistan’s population is illiterate, the country has the second highest number of out of school children in the world (9.5 million in 2005), it suffers from high drop-out rates even at the primary level, and there is substantial gender disparity at every education level. In fact, despite overall quantitative gains the gender gap has widened between 1981 and 2008 from 20.6 to 26.8 per cent. Rural- urban and interprovincial disparity also continues to persist. Interprovincial disparity in youth literacy is just as high as in adult literacy.

It is evident then that the Pakistani education system has failed to reach a large proportion of its eligible population. The problem is principally a supply side one. For one, the difficulty of accessing educational facilities keeps children away. A number of surveys register complaints about having to travel long distances to reach schools, especially for girls in rural areas. Lack of basic facilities in schools such as electricity, drinking water and toilets are additional deterrents to school attendance. Out of 163,914 public schools (including 10,651 mosque schools), 10.5 per cent operate without a building; 6.1 per cent are kacha schools; 61 per cent lack electricity; 36.5 per cent lack drinking water; 42.4 per cent lack latrines; 44.3 per cent lack boundary walls; 3.8 per cent are declared dangerous while another 16.5 per cent are in need of major repair. Almost 10,000 schools are officially designated as non-functional. Vacant teacher posts and absenteeism are also high across all provinces. Unaffordable costs, lack of interest in education, and for females, cultural sensitivities are other commonly cited reasons for children being out of school.

267Table 1: Disparities across gender, region and provinces Adult literacy rate Urban AreasMale 78Female 61Total 70Percentage of Population (aged 10 years and older) that has completed primary level or higher Male Female Total 70 57 64Punjab Sindh KP Balochistan Rural Areas78 79 73 74 5765 62 41 36 2671 71 58 57 4170 71 72 65 5260 57 38 32 2365 65 52 49 3681 81 78 75 6369 65 49 41 3275 74 64 60 48 Punjab Sindh KP Balochistan Overall58 50 61 47 6533 12 18 10 3845 33 39 31 5248 50 42 52 3530 11 17 8 3540 28 35 23 4666 54 68 49 6940 17 26 13 4453 37 47 33 57 Punjab Sindh KP Balochistan65 66 63 5443 39 22 1754 54 42 3756 57 57 4240 36 21 1449 47 38 2971 68 70 5550 43 30 2060 56 50 39 268 Population (aged 10 years and older) that has ever attended school Male 80 Female 66 Total

The present situation represents a failure on the part of the state to deliver on its fundamental duty to provide basic educational opportunities to its citizens. Those left out are people who will at best be suboptimal participants in the economy during their productive work life. Their sheer numbers represent a massive lost opportunity for Pakistan. Also, the current situation is bound to engender frustration and disaffection across the board. This is especially the case for a society like Pakistan’s where demand for education is very high. In a Population Council (2002) survey whose findings have persistently been confirmed by subsequent research, 80 per cent of the young males and over 70 per cent of their female counterparts included in the survey expressed a desire to be educated at secondary and tertiary levels. The supply­ demand gap then is an obvious alienating factor. Internal tensions become even more likely when one considers that gender and geographical location within Pakistan are significant determinants of access to education.

A number of reasons can be adduced for this dismal state of affairs. The 2009 National Education Policy correctly identifies the two primary reasons as the ‘commitment gap’ and the ‘implementation gap’. The commitment gap is reflected in the low resource allocation to the sector. In 2009-10, public expenditure on education was 2 per cent of GDP, the lowest in South Asia. This is representative of Pakistan’s average educational spending; in the last fifteen years, average education expenditures have been a mere 2.1 per cent of GDP. Even within education, the bulk of the investment has been channelled to a few well-maintained higher education institutions implying that the benefits of the public subsidy of education are primarily availed by the higher income groups. The primary and secondary education tiers which are believed to be crucial to developing human capacity en mass have been neglected. The implementation gap directly affects governance of the sector as well as the allocation and utilisation of resources. The lack of a planning culture and capacity and weaknesses in administrative capacity and accountability mechanisms result in only 20 to 30 per cent of the allocated funds being utilised effectively. Corruption, manifested in funds siphoned away for personal gain, influence in the allocation of resources, in the recruitment, training and posting of teachers, in selection of textbooks, and in 269the conduct of examinations and assessments are significant implementation challenges that decision-makers have struggled to address. Stage II: Failure to deliver quality. Pakistan’s education sector is anomalous in that it has three parallel and largely unconnected systems of education operating simultaneously. These are the public and non­elite private schools, the elite private schools, and the religious seminaries—the madrasahs. Approximately 67 per cent of the school going children are enrolled in public schools, close to 29 per cent are in private schools—the majority of these are in the non-elite variant—and 4 per cent attend madrasahs (see table 2). The three systems follow their own curricula, teaching methods, and examination processes. Consequently, quality of education and the type of student body in each vary greatly. Only the public education system is fully regulated by the government.

Table 2: Parallel streams of education No. of institution No. of students enrolledNo. of % of total institutions as a students % of total enrolled Public179,02224,657,81971.0 67.0 Private60,82710,541,08924.1 28.7 madrasahs12,2761,588,0754.9 4.3 Source: AEPAM, 2008.

The three education systems are broadly stratified along three dimensions: socio-economic, qualitative, and ideological. The madrasahs system largely caters to children from the poorest segment of society. The majority of public school and non-elite private school students belong to the lower-middle to middle socio-economic groups. Elite private schools apply stringent socio-economic screening and are reserved exclusively for the rich. So isolated are these systems that students go through their school life (and even adult life) without having the opportunity to engage intellectually across systems. The education sector therefore ends up producing three distinct cohorts from within the Pakistani youth, each quite cut-off from the other.

In terms of quality, madrasahs have the greatest mismatch with the requirements of modern economies. They are essentially geared towards producing cadres suitable only for the clerical sphere; this makes them misfits for mainstream employment opportunities. The public education and a large proportion of the non-elite private schools—together account for the overwhelming majority of Pakistani students—also suffer from extreme qualitative shortcomings. This is manifested in the learning outcomes, curricula, textbooks and other learning materials, assessments, teacher quality, and the learning environment. Although they teach all subjects expected of modern school systems, they follow fixed syllabi, which encourage rote learning—memorisation. The medium of instruction in public schools is predominantly Urdu; they even lack the capacity to develop a minimum level of proficiency in the English language, which is necessary for most white-collar jobs. The relatively small number of elite private schools are the only ones that provide decent quality education. They use English as the medium of learning and are ahead of the others in terms of teaching standards and learning outcomes. Most of them encourage objectivity and creative thinking among students. It is hardly surprising then that parents who send their children to private schools are found to be far more satisfied than those whose kids attend public schools or formal madrasahs.

The third layer of stratification is ideological. Though there is considerably greater overlap across systems in this case, in general one can attribute distinct and often irreconcilable world visions across the three systems. Pakistani madrasahs may not be actively engaged in producing militants as the West has suspected for long but they do produce graduates with narrow-minded ideological biases. In her research on madrasahs, Christine Fair (2006; 2007) argues that these cadres are much more likely to sympathise with Islamists where they are welcomed and given a positive identity. The syllabi of the public schooling system are closely managed by the state and provide a highly skewed historical narrative that is nationalistic and creates a siege mentality by portraying Pakistan as being perpetually under threat from all corners. The content also meshes Islam with nationalism and presents the two as being intrinsically linked. The roots of this anomaly lie in the 1980s when agenda-driven education was deliberately used as a political tool and textbooks were rewritten to 271inject a definitive anti-India and pan-Islamic bias. The elite private schools, while being bound by the state to follow the prescribed narrative in subjects such as Pakistan Studies, have more leeway given their unregulated nature. In addition, the economic stratum their students belong to allows them more physical and informational exposure to the Western style of life and leaves them less susceptible to accepting the curriculum biases at face value.

The divergent outlooks of these three cohorts are evident from who they look up to and which direction they want their country to take. Madrasah students tend to be amenable to the extremist world-view. Students from the public schools, who are perhaps most representative of mainstream society, idealise legendary Muslim historical figures but do retain some admiration for figures known for their anti-West outlook. Products of the private schools talk fondly of Hollywood stars, personalities in the arts and theatre, international sportsmen and the like. Overwhelming majorities of private school-educated youth seem to view Turkey as a model for Pakistan to replicate. This is fundamentally different than the preference of their less privileged counterparts who are more likely to mention Iran or Saudi Arabia.

Frustration, alienation, internal discord and polarisation are built into the education system. The isolation and divergent outlooks of the three variants make for a divided polity. Indeed, the perceptions of the country’s youth validate this. Children of the elite are highly dismissive of their Urdu medium counterparts and intolerant of young rural men, especially those from lower socio-economic backgrounds. A sizable segment from within the elite schools considers itself superior and more progressive than the rest. Madrasah students on the other hand blame the elite for having robbed them of necessary resources and causing hardship for the rest of society. Their sense of alienation and deprivation is shared by the public school, and to a lesser extent non­elite private school students and provides an opening to Islamists to cash in on a ‘haves versus have nots’ narrative. These disparate visions also make it virtually impossible to forge a consensus on a national narrative in Pakistan.

Stage III: Failure to provide livelihoods. Educational attainment is a double-edged sword. While lack of education disqualifies youth from attaining economic mobility and is thus undesirable, high level of 272education without the requisite outlet to apply skills raises expectations which, if unfulfilled for long, can create an ’expectation-reality disconnect’. Again, the latter makes the excluded disgruntled with the system, which not only keeps potentially productive human capacity from engaging in constructive endeavours but also acts as a violence inducing factor.

Surveys suggest that an overwhelming majority of young men and women in Pakistan want to work provided suitable opportunities— commensurate with their educational attainment—are made available. Unfortunately, access to desirable employment in Pakistan is as unequal as provision for high quality education. While Pakistan’s labour market has expanded, and the unemployment rate has declined to an impressive 5.32 per cent, the improvement is unable to keep up with the large pool of employable youth. In fact, youth employment has only dropped marginally since 1990 and even many who were employed at one time fell back into the unemployed category. To be sure, the majority of non-elite young citizens can only find relatively menial jobs and are thus underemployed. The public sector is inherently corrupt and job openings are rarely awarded on merit. Children of the poor, with generally little access to the corridors of power and already disadvantaged by the poor skill set developed in public schools, are invariably the first to be denied these prized positions.

The private sector has expanded tremendously in recent years and presents many more lucrative opportunities. Ironically however, the combination of the private sector’s growth and a virtual breakdown of the public sector act to increase the inequality in opportunities for graduates of private versus public schools. Private sector firms solicit employees with diverse exposures, a broad knowledge base, good English language skills, and robust analytical ability. The only young adults that fit the bill are products of elite private schools or foreign colleges (the latter are exclusively members of elite households). In fact, so blatant is the bias against public, non-elite private, and madrasah graduates that recruiters explicitly put a premium on foreign and elite local degrees. A disproportionate amount of entry level positions thus end up going to the already rich, leaving those from lower socio-economic classes underemployed. For educated (even if poorly) young men, underemployment ends up having just as much of an alienating effect as unemployment.

There is evidence aplenty of the coming crisis. Increasingly, reasonably eloquent, post-secondary degree holders are seeking financial help—that is to say, begging—on the streets of urban towns in Pakistan. These are 273young men very different from the stereotypical beggars that dot the streets of Pakistani cities and have been forced to the street by the labour market crunch. Detailed discussions with such individuals reveal great contempt for a state that cannot provide opportunities. There is also envy and resentment against the elite who are believed to have deliberately created entry barriers for the poor, and there is a sense of alienation from the larger society.

Reversing Failure

Inability to reverse these failures will not only limit Pakistan’s economic growth but carries the potential of rupturing the very fabric of society though polarisation and unrest. While there is very little hard evidence for education having contributed directly to terrorism in Pakistan, anecdotal evidence combined with profiles of most actors involved in terrorist attacks does suggest a linkage. Indeed, it would be naive to believe an absence of any correlation. The mechanisms through which this connection would be playing out are aptly described by Winthrop and Graff (2010) as:

1. Poor education causing grievances for those left out.
2. Education creating narrow world views.
3. Education failing to instil civic citizenship.
4. The context providing opportunities for militant recruitment.

Future challenges in terms of reversing the identified failures in education are likely to be even more daunting than in the past. A major reason is the severe demographic pressure. Pakistan possesses one of the largest youth bulges in the world. Over sixty-five million are between ages zero and fourteen and are thus either currently at school or will enter school life in the coming decade. Furthermore Pakistan is only half way through its demographic transition and the current rate of 3.8 births per female is set to carry Pakistan’s youth bulge well beyond 2025. This implies an extremely large cohort whose educational needs will have to be met if Pakistan is to extract positive demographic dividends. According to Mahmood (2009), barring accelerated improvement Pakistan confronts a situation where 28.2 million of its citizens will be out of school in the year 2030.

The economic signs are not encouraging for the short to medium term either. Pakistan will have an additional four million employable youth by 2030 taking the total number to twenty-one million. The stock of unemployed youth will have reached six million in 2030 unless unemployment is kept below 4% which is virtually impossible in the near term according to official estimates. The increased pace of urbanisation adds to the conundrum as expectant youth will move to the cities to find livelihoods, only to be frustrated by the modest absorptive capacity of Pakistani towns. The literature on the subject suggests that such a development encourages urban youth radicalisation.

Simply put, Pakistan faces a monumental task in halting and then reversing the decline in the education sector. Failure is not an option given that the state of education will determine Pakistan’s economic progress, its overall societal outlook, magnitude of internal tensions, and most importantly, the state’s ability to provide citizens with personal safety and an environment favourable to sustainable progress.

Stage 1: Correcting the failure to provide.

The ultimate goal for policymakers is to provide a level playing field for students irrespective of their caste, creed, location, family’s economic capacity and religion. Not only must access to education improve, but it must be spread evenly across the entire citizenry.

This will be challenging as Pakistan’s present youth development statistics suggest high disparity across socio-economic strata, schooling systems, and physical location. All future policies must remain cognizant of the explosive ramifications of neglecting underprivileged citizens in peripheral areas. Financial outlays for education must increase significantly in the coming years. Successive governments have committed themselves to increasing spending on education but progress has been slower than planned. No matter how politically challenging, education’s share as a proportion of GDP must be enhanced to at least the developing country average in the immediate term. In addition, conscious effort must be undertaken to ensure a better balance on spending between administrative and development expenditures within the sector.

Better governance and transparency are buzzwords repeated ad nauseam in discussions of institutional reform. The challenge is great and lacks an immediate solution. But there is no alternative to generating the political will and capacity for better management of the education sector and ensuring that educational allocations are made efficiently. Institutional duplication and organisational inefficiencies need to be addressed across the 275board. As a start, the ambiguities about the different roles of the Federal and Provincial governments in education need to be mapped and clarified.

Policy continuity is also essential. As a complementary policy strand, there is need for greater empowerment of those with a direct stake in education. The idea of establishing functional School Management Committees (SMCs) is correct provided they are given the needed authority and independence to ensure that schools function, teachers are present, and students attend regularly. The SMCs now in place are largely ineffectual. Given that dropout and completion rates are significantly correlated to poverty, reduction in tuition fees in public schools and increased allotment of need-based scholarships and free textbooks and uniforms should be encouraged. The Punjab government undertook such a program with mixed results. While the program was subsequently rolled back, its experience can be studied and improved upon as a similar initiative is launched across Pakistan.

Conditional cash transfer programs have increasingly become popular and shown to raise school enrolment and retention in a number of countries such as Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua and Brazil. Pakistan has introduced a few demand size incentives such as involving communities in social service delivery but the explicit use of cash transfers to ensure higher school attendance is largely missing. Moreover, the programs that do involve communities are small relative to the size of the problem, focus on particular provinces, are not integrated, and their targeting and administration is weak. International best practices could be used to improve Pakistan’s efforts in this realm. A positive development in recent years has been the mushrooming of non-elite private schools, especially in Punjab and Sindh. These schools are playing an increasingly significant role in extending educational services particularly in rural areas where the largest growth in private schools is occurring. Further encouragement of private schools along with innovative public-private partnerships where the public sector is found wanting is a desirable policy intervention.

Stage 2: Correcting the failure to deliver quality.

Qualitative improvements in education are bound to lag behind quantitative gains but 276efforts must strive to keep this gap as narrow a possible. The key lies in transforming the public school system and ensuring its uplift so that it can match its elite counterpart. Areas that need attention include the development of new teaching methods that promote creative thinking, qualitative benchmarks for student learning, and standards for teacher recruitment, among others. The concrete steps required are well understood and rehearsed. The political will to implement them is often lacking and needs to be evolved.

Largely at the behest of donors, Pakistan has paid substantial attention to teacher professional development. The effort should be reinforced from within. A step in the right direction has been made with the establishment of the National Professional Standards for Teachers in Pakistan. Efforts must be made to ensure the quality of teacher education and implementation of the standards.

In the short run, a stop-gap measure could entail setting up a program to bring in a significant number of foreign teachers or those from Pakistan’s substantial diaspora in the West, especially ones trained to teach English language and basic mathematics and sciences. These teachers could be placed across the various levels of public schooling throughout the country. To complement these efforts, stronger public-private partnerships have to be forged to help overcome some of the capacity constraints in the public sector. The government has initiated programs like ‘adopt a school’ whereby non-government organisations are encouraged to take over management of public schools. There is significant interest but the scope of such efforts is very limited at present. A well-crafted incentive structure needs to be put in place and bureaucratic hurdles removed to encourage more non-government entities to consider adopting schools.

The madrasah education system needs urgent reform to allow it to prepare students for modern economies while retaining their faith based focus. The agenda to transform the existing ones is oft expressed but political constraints and fear of resistance have prevented the government from doing anything significant. A more realistic alternative may be to set up parallel madrasahs run either by the public or private sector that utilises teachers able to offer balanced theological study in combination with teaching modern subjects.

With regard to public sector education syllabi, the emphasis should be on revising textbooks with the aim of reverting to the content used prior to Islamisation during the 1980s. The aim is not secularisation of the curricula— as that would meet resistance from a deeply conservative society. Rather, the aim should be to remove distortions of history and material that engenders extremist mindsets. Moreover, the curricula would benefit from greater emphasis on ‘peace education’ and teaching that instils a strong civic sense.

Finally, the government is encouraging private schools to offer 10 per cent of admissions to needy students from underprivileged backgrounds. This is a step in the right direction and can go a long way in removing the isolation of students among the three systems. The private sector must be urged to rigorously enforce this regulation, which is not the case at present. Stage III: Correcting the failure to provide livelihoods. Pakistan’s principal weakness in economic planning has been an overriding focus on high macroeconomic growth and not the quality or distributional effects of that growth. The model has not been inclusive and it is only recently that pro- poor growth has become part of the mainstream policy discourse. Strong and sustained macroeconomic growth is imperative to increase the size of the national pie. To complement this however, initiatives geared to equitable income distribution need to be taken. This also means providing job opportunities to the educated unemployed, many of whom come from disadvantaged social backgrounds.

The government’s social safety net initiatives will remain central to its ability to providing the disenfranchised the requisite livelihood opportunities. It is encouraging to see an emphasis on employment schemes and small scale business promotion by the present authorities. The allocations for such initiatives should be further increased and the institutional shortcomings that continue to undermine these programs should be corrected. Special efforts should be made to make these schemes transparent, perhaps by giving civil society a formal role in monitoring and accountability.

Vocational training stands out as an obvious avenue to explore in order to improve opportunities for the uneducated or the poorly educated. While there has been significant donor and government attention, there are still just a limited number of vocational training centres in urban areas 278while rural Pakistan lacks these facilities. Even where they exist, they do not seem to have been instituted under any coherent policy framework. Moreover, the quality of training is inadequate. Presently, there is lack of congruity between the local industries and training available at the institutes. Very little attempt has been initiated to involve the end users in the operation, management, and program delivery as well as to align the course contents to the needs of the industry. The lack of interactions between industries and Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) institutes has therefore resulted in the marginalisation of the TVET institutions with employers demonstrating little interest in extending cooperation to the institutions. This is an area where the donor community has relatively greater experience given its success in other countries. It could treat this as a priority by coordinating its efforts to correct the stated shortcomings.

Perhaps the most executable option to ease Pakistan’s labour force burden in the next decade or two is to find adequate opportunities for labour migration abroad. Pakistan has used this safety valve to good effect in the past by sending a large number of its skilled and unskilled labour force across the world. While economic constraints in recipient countries and the ’extremist’ tag attached to Pakistan in global perception has dented the traditional outflow of labour, the international community could help Pakistan in providing fresh avenues for labour absorption. To enhance the prospects, Pakistan’s vocational training could be tailored to the future demand of various countries projected to have a labour shortage. Friendly countries could consider special arrangements to allow inflow of employable Pakistanis.

Education remains central to Pakistan’s recovery. Given the current circumstances, hoping for return to stability without improving education substantially is a misnomer. The challenge confronting Pakistan is a daunting one. The state must begin to see education as a right, not a favour to its people. Even then, the suggested policy measures cannot bring change overnight. The next decade or so ought to be approached as a corrective period during which the essential policies will be put in place. Progress will likely be frustratingly slow but if executed properly these steps will prepare the ground for more accelerated and visible improvement in the decade that follows. Should this effort be made, the Pakistan of 2030 has every prospect of being more and better educated, 279with its society empowered by a better sense of civic responsibility—a country able to provide job opportunities to all its citizens. This, in turn, would serve as the essential base on which economic progress and prosperity can be predicated.