The education budget has once again fallen short of expectations, reflecting the federal government’s negligent attitude towards what should be the top priority. For FY17, the budgeted amount is Rs108,971 million – Around 0.35 percent of GDP (assuming the government’s envisaged growth rate of 5.7 percent) and Rs70 million less than the expenditure in FY16 (to the government’s credit, however, the expenditure this past year was 11 percent more than was budgeted).

In this year’s budget speech, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar chose not to reiterate the following statement from last year: “We had announced first in the PML-N manifesto and reiterated by the Prime Minister our resolve to increase the expenditure on education as percentage of GDP to 4 percent during our tenure.” In the same breath, however, he went on to hide behind the 18th Amendment:

“However, it should be noted that a major share of education expenditure is the responsibility of the provinces. The share of federal government in this expenditure is only 20 percent. Moving from the present level of 1.67 percent of GDP to 4 percent of GDP will require the federal government to increase its spending from 0.34 percent of GDP to 0.80 percent”, said Ishaq Dar in his budget speech last year. As it stands, the federal government increasing its share to 0.80 percent is unlikely at this pace, and that may be why the Finance Minister remained quiet about it this year.

Dar’s argument does make sense however – education is a devolved subject and is the responsibility of the provinces. Moreover, the areas under the administration of the federal government (FATA, GB, AJK, and Islamabad) would form a much smaller portion of the population, thus justifying lower spending on education compared to the provinces. But that isn’t how things really work.

One can point at the devolution of the Youth Affairs Ministry, yet the federal government is allocating funds for youth loans and laptops. If the federal government can encroach on provincial subjects to appease its vote banks, it can (and should) step into education matters as well.

In other countries with education services devolved, the federal government takes ownership of initiatives that the provinces are either not technically capable of handling, or do not have the fiscal space. For instance, India is far more devolved than Pakistan, yet in its budget, the federal government allocated over INR91 billion for an in-school meal initiative, with all states pitching in. Even the central government of the US allocates close to 0.9 percent of GDP on education, despite being highly decentralised.

All that said, one should give credit where it is due; the federal spending on education has gone up under PML-N; this past year the federal government spent more than budgeted and ended up actually bringing the spending on education up to 0.37 percent of GDP – something not seen in a long time. Moreover, Dar has proposed in his budget speech this year that individuals having taxable income less than one million rupees should be given tax relief equal to 5 percent of school fee up to Rs60,000 per child per annum.

Nevertheless, this year’s allocation reflects a fall in the budgeted amount, in absolute terms as well as in terms of GDP. Moreover, federal expenditure as a percentage of total expenditure is not really increasing, meaning the conversation is not moving forward. There’s still a long way to go, and more will be said about the federal education budget this week.