Daily Times

In Pakistan, the gender gap in school attendance is wider among the 25-40 age group (64% males vs. 47% females), narrows in the 5-9 age group (71.5% males vs. 65.4% females), showing progress in gender parity.

Gallup Pakistan, as part of its Big Data Analysis initiative, is looking at Ever Attended School statistics for Pakistan. This data is part of a study conducted using the ‘7th Pakistan Population and Housing Census’. The current edition looks at data from Ever Attended School statistics, which can be found here. According to the 2023 Population Census, 121 million individuals-representing 59% of the population aged over 5-have attended school at some point in their lives.

In terms of overall school attendance, Punjab leads with 72.28 million individuals having attended school, followed by Sindh with 25.05 million, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with 17.95 million, and Balochistan with 4.58 million. In Punjab, 71.5% of males have attended school, compared to 60.9% of females. Balochistan shows the widest gender gap, with only 29.3% of females having attended school, compared to 46.1% of males. In the 15-49 age group, 67 million people have attended school, representing 58% of that cohort. Meanwhile, for the 5-16 age group, 51 million people (72%) have attended school, illustrating an increase in school attendance in more recent years. 71.5% of males and 65.4% of females in the 5-9 age group have attended school, and the gap widens in older groups like the 25-40 bracket, where 64.0% of males and 47.0% of females attended.