At 2.5% of its GDP, Pakistan spends the least on education among South Asian nations, far less than the SDGs (SDG).
On the other hand, a special report released by the State Bank of Pakistan in its annual report “State of Pakistan’s Economy” claims that the government needs to spend 4-6 percent of GDP in order to implement the Education 2030 Framework for Action of Sustainable Development Goals.
Furthermore, improving the efficiency of education spending is critical to reducing expenditure leakages. The issues of ghost schools, high teacher absences, and proxy teachers require special in this area.
According to estimates, between 70 and 80 percent of provincial education budgets go toward paying teachers’ salaries. This necessitates immediate action because there are believed to be 30,000 to 40,000 ghost schools in the nation.
Although provincial efforts are being made to reduce the number of absent teachers, significant efforts are required to improve teacher management and quality.
A significant portion of public education spending has been devoted to building essential infrastructure, resulting in a marginal improvement in the quality of education at the primary and secondary school levels.
Students in Pakistan also have much lower levels of learning than students in other countries, according to the Global Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).
Pakistan also compares poorly in terms of pupil-to-teacher ratio, which means teachers have a greater workload that degrades the quality of education delivered.
A significant barrier to capturing the demographic dividend in tertiary education is the country’s gross enrollment ratio, which is notably low compared to peer economies. This is especially true given the growing specialization of academic disciplines and technological advancement. Similar to this, the technical education and vocational training system (TVET) continues to be in poor condition for a variety of reasons, which complicates efforts to reap the benefits of the demographic dividend.
The prospects for utilizing the demographic dividend in Pakistan are now limited by the country’s poor educational system. According to the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2021, approximately 27 million children aged 5-14 were illiterate in 2021, and approximately 10 million children aged 10-14 had only primary education.
In 2031, the projected working-age population is expected to consist of 21% of people who are illiterate and undereducated, unless these children receive education later in life.
