Insufficient measures for increasing literacy

By Asghar Azad KARACHI: Has the Sindh government taken proper steps for providing education to every child of five to 16 years of age in order to fulfill its constitutional responsibility under the 18th Constitutional Amendment’s Article 25-A, question was raised in a constitutional petition submitted in the Sindh High Court (SHC) by nine non-governmental organisations (NGOs) through Advocate Faisal Siddiqi. The SHC’s division bench, comprising Justice Maqbool Baqar and Justice Shafi Muhammad Siddiqi on Tuesday issued notice to the secretary Sindh Education Department for appearing in-person before the court on May 2. In the submitted petition, Advocate Siddiqi stated, “The provision of free and compulsory education at primary and secondary level is an inevitable requirement of the entire country and one of every ten children not going to school in the world lives in Pakistan”. He further stated in the petition that according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute of Statistics Report 2011, as many as 3,108,413 boys and 4,191,384 girls could not join schools at primary level. The petition also cited an observation of the World Bank which stated that access, equity and quality primary and secondary education keeps-on a challenge in Sindh province. “About 11 million five to 14-year-old children could not join schools in the year 2007. Only 53 percent of individuals of 17 to 21 years of age had completed their secondary schooling”, claimed the cited observation report. According to the Pakistan Living Standard Measurement Survey (PLSMS) 2007-8, the primary enrollment across Pakistan is 35 percent (in private schools) and out of it in 27 percent is for Sindh province and only five percent for Sindh rural areas. Talking to Daily Times outside the courtroom Advocate Siddiqi said the education’s situation in our country especially in Sindh province was deteriorating rapidly and they approached with the SHC for bringing some betterment in the sector. Advocate Siddiqi further said “We submitted the right of education is enshrined under Article 9, of the Constitution of 1973, because right to life includes a right to respectable education”. “One of the principle of policies for the governance of the State as enshrined under Article 37 (b), of constitution belongs to removal of illiteracy and provision of free and compulsory secondary education within a minimum possible period”, Advocate Siddiqi said. Replying to a query he said, after the passage of 18th Amendment Act, 2010, there are two fundamental changes, one the responsibility for education has devolved to the province which have made respondent in the petition; secondly, in addition to the Article 9 and Article 37, of the Constitution of 1973, Article 25-A grants a fundamental right for free education to all children of less than 5 to 16 years of age.