ISLAMABAD: As Pakistan continues to face an education crisis, there are currently 25.02 million boys and girls between 5 and 16 years of age who are out of school in the country, says a recent report by Alif Ailaan, a Pakistani alliance for education reform.
The report while using publicly available sources of information, explores what the data tell us about Pakistan’s school-going population and importantly about those children who are not in school.
It says that the proportion of out-of-school children rises as the level of education increases so that by the higher-secondary level some 85 percent are not in school.
In absolute terms, more than half of the country’s out-of-school children live in Punjab. Of the 25.02 million out-of-school children in Pakistan, 52 percent are in Punjab.
The report says that there are 13.7 million girls out of school and 11.4 million boys out of school.
The date reveal vast regional disparities in providing girls with equal opportunity for education.
The greatest disparity is in the federally administered tribal areas (FATA) followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. As many as 78 percent girls of FATA and 50 percent of girls in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are out of school.
It shows that as many as 70 percent of the out-of-school children have never seen the inside of a classroom.
