Daily Times

LAHORE: Despite spending millions on the education sector, the provincial capital has more primary schools for boys than girls, Daily Times has learnt.

According to figures available with this scribe, Lahore has 348 primary schools for around 59,000 registered boys but only 268 schools for almost 51,000 registered girls.

The Punjab School Education Department had claimed building schools and providing missing facilities in the education sector but it failed to end gender discrimination. The Education Ministry also announced education emergency in the province and claimed that millions of students were enrolled in the drive. However, according to Education For All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report, education in Pakistan included some of the worst indicators. The report revealed that two thirds of out-of-school children in Pakistan are girls, amounting to over 3 million girls. Beside this report, several other education indicators had placed Pakistan in the lowest categories when it came to poor education facilities for girls.

The data of schools and students enrolled in Lahore has shown the ratio of around 191 female students per school as compared to 169 male students per school. The difference was not much between the ratios, but considering the poor standard of education and poor performances of girls, the government should have spent more on female education than male education.

Women rights’ activists Sara Sheraz told Daily Times that education of young girls was necessary, as the country consists of more females than males. Sara said that need for female education was more, but budget by the government was not set as per requirement.

“The government should prioritise the needs of the society by allocating more budget for education of girls,” she said, adding that the semi-urban areas of Lahore were no more different than Rajanpur in terms of female education.

She was of the view that female education must be accessible and missing facilities should be provided on the basis of needs, adding that the government should allocate teachers on the basis of student-teacher ratio.

“The government’s duties are being performed by civil society activists who are already taking initiatives to sensitise the public regarding gender equality,” she added.

Executive District Officer (Education) Tariq Shafiq was of the view that the government was promoting female education, as it believed in the notion that “teaching a female is like teaching the whole family”.