Planning documents for the Seventies emphasized the importance
of primary education and the curtailment of the mushrooming growth at
the higher level. Our review suggests that this policy has had only
partial success in implementation. Viewed in the context of educational
planning theory and the evidence available for Pakistan, the policy is
found to be sound. While the benefits of a correct distribution of
investment within the educational sector are self-evident, resource
constraints have been leading to an overall underinvestment in the
educational sector. We show that Pakistan's public sector education is
highly subsidized and so to supplement the limited resources devoted to
it, we recommend, as a possible solution, a selective application of
user charges.
