Infographic on out of school children, data sourced through Pak Alliance for Math and Science
Laiba Zai, Nukta
79% of out-of-school children have never been inside a classroom
Tehsils with low female literacy also have higher levels of out-of-school girls
Pakistan has 25.3 million children between the ages of 5 and 16 who are not in school, a new report has said.
Titled The Missing Third, the report has been published by the Pak Alliance for Math and Science. Released earlier this week, the report states that 79% of these out-of-school children have never been inside a classroom. The rest -- 21% -- are drop-outs.
The report draws from figures revealed in the population census for 2023. The data used in the report is divided into sub-districts or tehsils, an administrative unit for governance.
Tehsils are ranked by the proportion of out-of-school children rather than absolute numbers.
Key takeaways
Over 50% of the never enrolled children are aged 5-9 years, threatening Pakistan’s future literacy rates. At least 45 tehsils, including provincial capitals, account for a quarter of Pakistan’s out-of-school children.
The sub-district disparity is alarmingly high. Tailor-made policies are needed at the tehsil level to deal with female literacy, drop-outs and never-been-to-school children, and rural-urban disparity.
Retention of children, particularly girls, is a severe challenge for tehsils with lower out-of-school children.
Tehsils with very low female literacy (below 10%) tend to have more girls out of school. Female literacy significantly impacts various aspects of life, from the number of children born to the economic status of families, showing a deep connection between education and overall community well-being.
How do big cities fare?
Infographic on out of school children in provincial capitals, data sourced through Pak Alliance for Math and ScienceLaiba Zai, Nukta
The four provincial capitals - Peshawar, Lahore, Quetta, and Karachi, are home to 3.3 million school-age children, 30% of whom are not enrolled in school.
Peshawar has the highest proportion (62%) of out-of-school girls among the provincial capitals, whereas Lahore has the highest proportion (54%) of out-of-school boys among the provincial capitals.
Quetta has the highest proportion (37%) of out-of-school children among the provincial capitals, and Karachi has the highest number (1.7 million) of out-of-school children among provincial capitals.
Identifying where out-of-school children reside
The report aims to identify where the children with whom the Pakistani state is failing currently reside.
"A standard response to improving access is to carry out enrollment drives; while these are important and, in some cases, necessary, it also goes to show how decision-making is rarely being undertaken based on the publicly available data and how holding banners and posing for photos is often considered an effective communications campaign," said Pak Alliance for Maths and Science, an Islamabad-based think tank which penned the report.
"In places where a significant majority of out-of-school children have attended school and then dropped out, the mechanism to reach them will have to be different. If the same children are in an urban and highly densely populated area, the interventions will need to be different.
"If a girl child and over a thousand of her peers, all adolescents, are residing in a rural and sparsely populated area, with negligible percentage of literate parents, the way to implement Article 25A will and should, differ," it added, referring to Pakistan's law which guarantees the right to free education.
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