Sadiq Public School: Private & Public Education in Pakistan

In Pakistan during the 1970s, the government nationalised all private schools, severely restricting the growth of this sector and its potential in educating young Pakistanis. Fast forward 20 years and we find that private sector initiatives in the area of education have re-emerged all over the country.

This hasn’t happened in a vacuum though. Rather, private schools are more in demand than ever before at a time when Pakistan’s public school system is facing very big problems. Some of the major problems public schools face include limited financial resources, poor quality of content and above all, parents who can give little attention to their children’s studies at home. Pakistan’s public schools are either overcrowded or underfunded. These issues have largely fuelled the recovery of private schools in Pakistan. Although traditionally, private schools have been a luxury only the rich can afford, this is not necessarily the case in the current comeback of the private sector in Pakistan’s education system. According to the Human Development in South Asia’s 1998 report, 70 per cent of the schools in Pakistan have no toilets, 68 per cent have no drinking water, 92 per cent have no playgrounds, 60 per cent have no boundary walls and 16 per cent are without a building. A delegation from the UK visiting Pakistan has also noted a lack of desks, books, blackboards, electricity, doors and windows, not to mention the problem of overcrowded classrooms. And the phenomenon of ghost schools, institutions which receive government grants but do not exist, is now common knowledge. These are just some of the realities of Pakistani public schools, especially in rural areas.

The country’s public school system was once able to produce literate, disciplined students. Today, it is an open drain of corruption and backwardness. This is why private schools have become an alternative for parents serious about educating their children, despite personal financial constraints. Although, generally speaking, private schools have often been criticised for worsening the problem of inequality in education, the available evidence clearly indicates that the private education sector is providing quality education and is very important in Pakistan.

Naveed Ahmed Wassan

Published in The Express Tribune, February 18^th,  2014.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.