Sir: Achieving a respectable literacy rate would be a dream come true for this country. Lack of access to a quality education is a problem that Pakistani children have to face along with issues like poverty, terrorism and sanitary problems.
According to reports by the Elementary and Secondary Education Department, more than 1.8 million children are out of school in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). 23 percent of children aged 5 to 17 years are not receiving an education.
Out of these, 64 percent are girls and 36 percent are boys. 64 percent of the total have never been enrolled and 36 were either ‘previously enrolled’ or dropouts. The report added that disinterest in education, poverty, absence of school and religious and social norms were cited as reasons for this many children not going to school. Out of the total number of enrolled children; 61.52 are being educated in government schools, 31.86 percent in private schools and three percent in seminaries.
Districts like Abbottabad had the highest enrolment rate in the province, followed by the Haripur, Malakand and Chitral districts. The KP government needs to do all it can to enrol out of school children, since the PTI has made very tall claims about the state of education in KP is better than that in other provinces.
ZEESHAN NASIR
Turbat
Published in Daily Times, May 10th 2018.