Education in the Southern Punjab Region

Basic Education is a technical term defined by the Washington State Legislature, meant to capture the knowledge and skills needed to participate in the economy and in our democracy and meant to comply with our state's constitutional paramount duty. Analyzing the process of radicalization, as this report aims to do, it is fairly important to analyze the state  of education in this region. Education quite clearly defines the parameters which are shaping the minds of the youth and making them susceptible to become radicalized. In an attempt to gain insight on the state of education in the five main districts/regions of southern Punjab, the report "Education Budget Analysis; Five districts of Southern Punjab" by I­SAPS (Institute of Social and Policy Sciences) was consulted.

The role while focusing on the state of education especially gender specifically, lays a very clear picture of how much of the state budget input has been played in the situation of education in the region. A comparison of the Net Enrollment rate (NER) is established and the report identifies that compared to the time span of 2006­2007, the year 2007­2008 experience a 1% decrease in NER of the state. This change seems to have been resulted by the situation in the province of Punjab where fairly the enrollment rate in educational institutions declined compared to other provinces. In fact a decline from 62% to 61% was experienced in a year. Similarly a comparison of the Gross Enrollment Rate (GER) of Southern parts of reflects a lower literacy rate in the region compared to the Northern parts of the region. In addition to this various studies have highlighted that beyond primary level education in the southern Punjab region, student enrollments are declining. An example can be taken from the Multan region where about 74% girls and 65% boys in the primary schools do not make it up to the next level. These statistics and those more to follow implied and indicated the lack of budget invested in the educational sector and also the poorly planned allocation of these resources. This low share of development budget is quite evident in all regions of Southern Punjab. For example in the Multan region the share of development budget decreased from 2­6 percent in the time period ranging from 2007­2010. A more shocking example is projected in the region Muzaffargarh where the development budget for 2009­2010 was 24% less than the total utilized development budget in 2008­2009.