Pakistan's educational landscape has been changing fast in the last two
decades or so. A prominent feature of this change is growth in the private schools,
which now enrol over 30% of all school going children in Pakistan. Several
comparative studies suggest that private schools are relatively more efficient
compared with the public schools in as much as they produce more learning with
less money. These developments and the associated policy suggestions have given
rise to debates about the role of public and private sectors in financing and
provision of education. In this paper, we argue that: the private/public pair does
not carry the same meaning across different historical contexts. In the west there is
a longstanding tug of war between the terms in this pair. The private is not shaped
by a similar counter-concept of public in Pakistan as it is in the Western countries.
The proponents and detractors of private [or public] education in Pakistan are,
therefore, making a category mistake in their reference to schools as private or
public; and the evidence about the apparent success of 'private' sector in countries
like India and Pakistan is deployed to support privatization in both the east and the
west. Following this line of thinking, we argue for looking beyond the
public/private dichotomy and refocusing debates on the meaning and purposes of
education and on harnessing all the resources of achieving them.

Keywords: Education, Public Education, Privatization of
Education, Education Reforms, Education in Pakistan