Sania Khan, from Pakistan, describes the education system there.

My name is Sania Khan. I am from Mansehra (division Hazara, province Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). I am 20 years old and studying in the Govt Post Graduate College Mansehra.

Here I will write about education in Pakistan. Education plays a very vital role in the life of every person. But education quality in Pakistan is very bad. Starting from primary education to higher education Pakistan has failed to produce an effective human resource for national building.

The Education system in Pakistan is divided into six levels

Pre-primary (from the age 3 to 5)
Primary (from 1 to 5 standard)
Middle (from 6 to high (from 9 to 10)
Intermediate (from 11 to 12) and
University (graduate and undergraduate degree).

The Education system of Pakistan is divided into three broad categories: Public, Private and Madrasah system. The public education system is facing a paucity of resources as 89% of the educational budget is allocated for salaries of teachers and staff and only 11% is left for development. Also, there is a significant difference in teaching quality between public and private sector education. Students who reach university level lack certain qualities like a research-oriented approach and creativity. This situation has been aggravated by the poor examination system of Pakistan. It is based on a cramming approach and discourages creativity among young pupils. Taking into account matriculation and intermediate examination; the question papers are either definition based, or descriptive questions of important topics and students just cram the subject and reproduce it on answer sheets. Also, the theoretical portion of science subjects consists of 85% weightage which discourages the practical approach in science subjects.

University-level education also depicts the same sub-standard picture as secondary and higher secondary education. University instructors also feed students by providing certain notes to their students, assignments are full of plagiarism and there is a serious crisis in research work at the graduation level in universities.

So, a university graduate complains about unemployment and lack of merit in the country; actually, he lacks the basic qualities of being a university graduate which are essential to lead the modern industry.