DailyMirror – Editorial
On Tuesday the Pakistan Coalition for Education (PCE) demanded from the Pakistan government that the budgetary allocation for education should be increased from the present 2% to 7% percent.
On Wednesday the Democratic National Alliance (DNA) cried foul over the Sri Lankan government decision to bringing down the education budget to 2.1% a 42% drop in funds over last three years.
In India rights groups are demanding that the allocation for education which is around 4% of the GDP right now, be increased to 6%.
In Bangladesh the education budget remains 2.4% of the GDP. Though Nepal is fairly better placed with a 3.4% it is still behind the UNICEF standard of 6%.
On the positive side the Maldives which has been maintaining a healthy 7.5% remains South Asia’s best country for education allocation followed by Bhutan 5.2%.
Accordingly barring Afghanistan where latest statistics are not available, Sri Lanka and Pakistan remain the poorest spenders on education in the region.
As such it is no surprise for anybody to agitate about the plight of Sri Lanka which had been maintaining quite high standards of education till recent years.
Low funding on education will result in cutting down of allocations on buildings, furniture, teacher training, curricular development and on teacher salaries and this certainly can be lethal to the ailing education system here.
Overall, the global trend on education budgets has been quite interesting.
Cuba stands the world’s highest spender on education as a percentage on the GDP with a whopping 19%. Pacific Island Vanatu comes second with 11% while the landlocked Southern African state Lesotho is third with 10.4%.
The United States spends roughly around 5.7% while in the UK it is about 5.3% of the GDP.
Of the Asian countries Yemen, Brunei, Mongolia are the best countries in Asia for education allocation with 9.5%, 9.1% and 9% respectively while Malaysia too maintains little over 8%.
Equatorial Guinea is the country with the lowest percentage of spending on education. It remains 0.6% of the GDP in the central African state.
Coming back to the local scenario with 79 schools reportedly being closed every year due to student, teacher shortage and other reasons, a drop in education funding is certainly a worrisome factor.
While the likes of Higher Education Minister S.B. Dissanayake are planning to get Oxford and Cambridge Universities to open branches here it is also important to put primary and secondary education in order.