Out of school

May 03, 2018

NOTWITHSTANDING the efforts made by the provinces to improve education in Pakistan, the situation persists in remaining dismal. One example of this comes from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the Elementary and Secondary Education Department completed a survey spread over a year under which 4.52m households were surveyed across 25 districts. The findings, which came with a price tag of Rs227m, indicated that more than 1.8m children are out of school — or 23pc of the total population of those aged between five and 17 years. Out of this figure, some 34pc of boys have never gone to school or have dropped out, while girls, at 66pc, fared even worse. Meanwhile, in the most populous province of Punjab, some 5.03m girls remain detached from the school network, out of 9.2m similarly situated children. This was revealed last week by a Unicef education specialist, who also pointed out that in the world ranking of out-of-school children, Pakistan is placed only behind Nigeria; amongst the provinces, Punjab is rated as the worst, mainly on account of the higher number of people living in the province.

It is no secret that the scourge is countrywide, with out-of-school figures for Sindh and Balochistan equally distressing. It has been years since an ‘education emergency’ sounded alarm bells, but the state has failed to address it. No doubt, poverty is largely to blame for children not going to school, but that alone does not stand in the way of access to education. Poor infrastructure — many government schools remain without boundary walls, toilet facilities and drinking water — and long distances, along with chronic teacher absenteeism have all combined to keep millions of children out school; they have either not been enrolled or have dropped out after primary education. Perhaps it is the scale of the challenge in each province that has made the education authorities feel helpless. But the larger picture is more terrifying, as childhood gives way to an unlettered adulthood.