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Education is the basic right of every citizen of any country. In Pakistan, however, with all other necessities, education has also been made difficult to achieve for most of the population.
Every parent wants to give their child the best education and with government schools’ poor condition not only in architectural aspect but also with the continuous deteriorating quality of education most are left with no choice but to opt for a private school despite their limited resources. Sadly, the dilemma continues and with the rising fees of schools in Pakistan and parents have to make extra efforts to deal with this situation.
For some, only their children going to a school is the goal whether that school provides quality education or not. What matters to them is that the school fees are comparatively lower and under their budget and so they are willing to compromise the key factor i.e. the quality of education that school is providing. Others take a different approach to deal with this problem and concentrate only on getting their sons the education which is the equal right of the opposite gender as well.
Out of these, some make discrimination by sending their sons to a reputable school and their daughters to a school of lower standards while the rest of them only have eyes for their sons and ignore their daughters completely depriving them of their basic right. This also adds to the chapter of gender discrimination which is another serious issue in our country.
Ample protests have been carried out by civilians including parents and students both against burdening school fee structure but they all ended to not much effect. Laws do exist but poor enforcement has given school management an open hand in their dealings. Due to this reason, schools are now within popular and lucrative businesses.
To temper the burden and yet charge good amounts from parents, it is a common practice of schools to break down total fee into several heads like tuition fee, stationary fee, lab fee etc. Also, some schools collect a further fee based on intervals of a quarter or 6 months. Taking advance fee quarterly also gives a hard time to parents in managing their finances.
Further conclusions on education in Pakistan can be drawn from several other aspects. The ratio of total enrollment to the population of the age group that officially corresponds to the level of education is reasonable for Pakistan as per recorded data by worldbank.org however, unfortunately, the adult literacy rate. i.e percentage of people aging 15 and above who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life, stands at around 56% only (worldbank.org). This describes a lot of us the sobbing situation of the education system in Pakistan.
Although the government is claiming to take necessary steps to improve the quality of education in every rural and urban area of the country no favorable results have been observed yet.
