Literacy rates need boosting

Pakistan is lagging behind in its efforts to achieve a higher literacy rate by 2015, as part of the global Education For All (EFA) movement, but is on the right track to meet the six goals outlined in the Dakar Framework for Action, an agreement which came into effect in 2000 and is supported by over 180 countries, the UN system and other international agencies, according to a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) official. "Our assessment is based on an EFA global monitoring report from 2002, and statistics at the time, but I think the government is putting in a fair amount of effort to reform the educational system, and we are assisting them in proving that the estimates are wrong," Ingeborg Breines, the UNESCO country representative, told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad. According to the Dakar agreement, which was concluded 10 years after the birth of the EFA movement in 1990, all children in the 184 countries that have signed up to the World Education Forum should have access to free and compulsory primary education of good quality, with vulnerable and disadvantaged children in particular being provided with comprehensive early childhood care and education. The agreement also envisages a 50 percent increase in adult literacy levels by 2015, with a special emphasis on women and the elimination of gender disparities by ensuring that girls get full and equal access to basic education of good quality. Breines said she was actually quite impressed by the efforts made by the Pakistani government towards meeting the targets set for 2015. "There was some talk earlier about a public-private sector partnership, but it is encouraging that both the secretary for education, as well as the minister, both agree it is the government’s responsibility to provide quality education to its people," Breines explained. "But literacy is just the first step to education. This is a threshold you have to get past, and it’s a difficult threshold for most people, so we have to assist those people," she added. Reform, itself, had to be a slow, steady, coherent process, with research institutions required to be more involved, Breines maintained. "And, for education to be of quality, better teachers are required. For UNESCO, the status of teachers is the lynchpin of an educational system," she stressed.