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The government of Pakistan accepts education as a fundamental right for its citizens, as well as its commitment to provide access to education to every citizen. This challenge demands efficient use of available resources. These resources may come from the government, private sector, civil society groups and development partners. Pakistan's record on the education front has not been impressive. No doubt some progress has been made, but it has been rather slow. Besides governance issues, one of the factors for slow improvement in the education indicators has been the low level of public expenditure on education which was around 2.3 percent of GNP during the 1990s. This was significantly short of the minimum of 4 percent of GNP recommended by the UNESCO for developing countries. Presently, access to school education is inadequate and there are also gender and rural-urban imbalances, both in the availability and quality of education. Education remains inequitably distributed among the various regions and income groups in the country. Literacy and participation rates are lower than those of other countries with similar levels of economic development. The target of minimum essential requirement for quality education has not yet been achieved. There are shortages of trained and qualified teachers, especially females. Educational Institutions also lack proper physical infrastructure, and on the other hand some are sub-optimally utilized. Teachers lack training, dedication, motivation and interest in their profession. Curricula too, are mostly non-relevant to the present day requirements. The present government has given top priority to education, which has rightly been termed as "change agent". For improvement of the education sector, the government has emphasized not only to increase the literacy rate but also to improve the quality of education at all levels. The efforts are being made to revise and update the curricula as well as provide necessary training to teachers to meet the challenges of the time. The National Education Policy has envisaged to achieve 55 percent literacy rate by 2003 and 70 percent by 2010. It is hoped that through joint efforts of public, private and the NGO sectors, the set targets would be achieved.
