Reports suggest that a survey conducted by Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa government has found that 1.5 million school-age children in the province are not enrolled at school. It is encouraging that the KP provincial government has undertaken this effort to generate data for evidence-based policy making. However, careful observers will have noticed that there is a mismatch between the reported figure and data reported in the Pakistan Education Statistics (PES) for 2015-16. It is highly unlikely for the KP government’s recent survey and the PES data both to be accurate. The PES had reported 22.64 million out of school children across the country in 2016 and Punjab’s share in it was 9.92 million. If we are to believe the KP government’s survey, we’re left with 11.22 million out of school children between Sindh, Balochistan and FATA. This is highly unlikely. Education is a key part of the Sustainable Development Goals Pakistan has signed up to meet by 2035. There are challenges that the country faces regarding improvement of the quality of education being provided at public as well as private sector institutes. With questionable data, however, most well-meaning efforts to overcome these challenges will also fall short of ever attaining their objectives. The authorities concerned should revisit these figures and collate them with the PES data. Though that would be a daunting task but it is entirely possible that the KP had managed to drastically bring down the number of out of school children since the publication of the PES 2016. However, the government needs to demonstrate through monthly enrollment statistics the reduction it has achieved in the last year to finally arriving at the figure reported in the most recent survey. This survey was done to precisely to find how many school-age children remain out of school. It would be travesty if the government ends up reducing this effort to a gimmick for political point scoring. The survey has put a question mark on education statistics available in the public domain both for KP and the federation in general. Those working to improve the state of affairs in the education sector — and thankfully we have quite a few such individuals and organisations — need to take this mismatch in statistics seriously and hold the authorities concerned to account. It is a matter that concerns the country’s future and cannot be taken lightly.* Published in Daily Times, September 7th 2017.