Inflation and education

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INFLATION is fast becoming education’s nemesis. The new academic year has brought in a flood of problems for the parents of school going children owing to the price hike. Textbooks, tuition fees and even the price of school uniforms and shoes have gone up. The essential needs of students have become more expensive, slowly going out of reach for the common man. Most private schools have increased their fees and are charging newcomers exorbitantly. The increase in the price of textbooks has sparked a blame game where the publishers are putting the responsibility on the paper producers for creating a shortage whereas the latter while refuting these charges attribute the price hike to rising input costs. The impact of skyrocketing prices on the education sector may have an adverse effect on the net enrollment rate (NER) of the country which currently stands at a paltry 56 per cent.

The problem is basic: unlimited wants and scarce resources. Naturally low-income families may choose to spend their meagre incomes on their meals to survive. With burgeoning food prices there is little left to spend on other needs like education, which would appear to be a luxury to a family which cannot eat a square meal every day. Thus education suffers. In order to prevent children from dropping out, the government and schools themselves need to play a constructive role. Education is the primary responsibility of the state and in the last decade or so the government in Pakistan has unfortunately tried to shift this responsibility to the private sector. As a result education has increasingly become more unaffordable and inaccessible for the indigent — more so today when food inflation has compounded the problems of many classes. Undoubtedly public sector schools do exist but official policy being what it is these institutions suffer from serious neglect. The issue is of the quality of education in government schools, which has basically created the push towards the private sector. With fewer people now being able to afford it, the vacuum in the public sector is being acutely felt. This calls for a concentrated effort by the government to increase the number of schools and improve the quality of education in its own institutions. Private schools can help mitigate the problems of their students by providing text books on loan, economising on exercise books and curtailing their profit margin in different areas. They would thus be able to cater to a wider segment of society filling the gap left by poor public sector education in the country.