Govt to enroll 70,000 out of school children by June 30, NA told

Author: Muhammad Faisal Kaleem

The government has decided to bring all out of school children in the country into school by June 30 this year as currently Pakistan stands with highest number in the world with around 23 million children remained deprived from basic education, the National Assembly (NA) was informed on Friday.

“Currently, the Pakistan has highest number of out of school children in the world unfortunately while I have committed to take the figure to zero by June 30 in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) from around 70,000 children out of school,” Minister for Federal Education and Professional Training Rana Tanveer Hussain told the lower house in response to a question.

The Education Minister claimed that the government is vigorously working to upgrade the education system.

“Actually, the situation was worse in the last four years which took a lot of effort to streamline and now we have set a successful road successfully for making the education sector at par with international standards,” he said.

He further informed the house that the government too many initiatives in last nine months which yielded significant results that, he added, increase in 0.8 percent literacy rate increased in last few months was one of such positive impacts.

Besides, he maintained, “launch of TeleSchool was started to provide free education to the children in rural areas of the ICT at their doorstep that is a state-of-art facility with complete required infrastructure,” adding that other steps including digital solutions, up-gradation of distance learning education.

Rana Hussain further claimed that the World Bank not only applauded these initiatives but also offered 30 buses to convert them to education mobiles.

Article 25-A of the constitution provides the right of education equally to every child.

However, it seems the non compliance of this constitutional binding from the authorities concerned.

As per available information, said deprived children from education have significantly increased in the last 8 years while each government seemed claiming to send out of school children to schools in their best priorities. Previous education Minister Shafqat Mehmood kept this issue in almost every speech during his tenure while claiming that they are trying their best to settle this issue.

In 2021, Mahmood presented a summary before the federal cabinet.

According to which, every four children in the country had never attended a school. He requested his government to focus on targeted solutions to this issue.

The then minister also suggested that a very serious situation of both foundational skills and their significance for productivity and growth needed to be sought.

Before this, Baligh Ur Rehman repeatedly claimed as an education minister that his government was passionately working to root the issue out thoroughly. Despite all these efforts, the number has been increasing instead of decreasing.