Education Budget of Pakistan

Each term, the Pakistani government allocates an educational budget by the approval of the Federal and Provincial assemblies. Pakistan has allocated up to 83.3 billion for the Education sector in the fiscal year of 2020. This budget has an improvement of about 2.6% from the previous year. This budget however, is still the lowest in the region falling behind most third-world countries in the subcontinent. Education Budget of Pakistan.

This allocation is about 4% of the total budget of Pakistan (or its GDP) As Pakistan aims to achieve its SDG™s by 2030, one must realize that this budget is simply not feasible due to lack of financing by the public sector in education and the monopolization of the schooling industry.

The budget mainly consists of primary and secondary education affairs, both taking up majority of the budget while the least is reserved for administration. The United Nations states that Pakistan is one of the lowest ranked when it comes to human development and due to its high literacy rate of 58% and a very high number of students dropping out school (22.9%,) it is deeply concerning as to how Pakistan will feasibly be able to sustain itself without an educated work force.

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This means that about 40% of Pakistanis still cannot read or write. Therefore, most technological advancements simply cannot happen in Pakistan due to children not being able to read properly. Punjab and Sindh have improved when it comes to their literacy rate whereas KPK and Baluchistan have remained almost the same. Pakistan has now focused more towards educating girls and has allocated a large amount of the budget towards it as the country suffers from one of the lowest female literacy rates in the world.

While this issue is mainly considered provincial, it is the responsibility of the government to provide a proper system of checks and balanced and influx these provinces with the proper budget and man power to allow them to educate our youth and improve our literacy rate. In this current pace, we are soon to over-taken by every country in the sub-continent and will soon be left behind in terms of technological advancements due to our sheer lack of adaptability as we have a low literacy rate.