According to a report by the UNESCO quoting official statistics released by the Federal Education Ministry of Pakistan, the overall literacy rate is 46 per cent, while only 26 per cent of girls are literate. Independent sources and educational experts, however, are skeptical about these figures. They place the overall literacy rate at 26 per cent and the rate for girls and women at 12 per cent, contending that the higher figures include people who can handle little more than a signature. There are 163,000 primary schools in Pakistan, of which merely 40,000 cater to girls. Of these, 15,000 are in Punjab Province, 13,000 in Sind, 8,000 in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and 4,000 in Baluchistan.
Similarly, according to other printed statistics, out of a total 14,000 lower secondary schools and 10,000 higher secondary schools, 5,000 and 3,000 respectively are for girls, in the same decreasing proportions as above in the four provinces. There are around 250 girls colleges, and two medical colleges for women in the public sector of 125 districts. Some 7 million girls under 10 go to primary schools, 5.4 million between 10 and 14 attend lower secondary school, and 3 million go to higher secondary schools. About 1.5 million and 0.5 million girls respectively go to higher secondary.
A recently printed report further adds to these figures. It says that more than 13 million girls in Pakistan have never seen a classroom, and nearly, half of Pakistan’s 53 million children aged 5-16 are out of school and 55pc of those are girls. Pakistan has the third largest number of out of -school girls in the world which makes it 5%.
According to a report published in 2014 under the title “25 Million Broken Promises” a staggering 13.7 million girls and 11.4 million boys between the 5-16 age bracket, are out of school, 70 percent of whom have never received any sort of formal education. As of 2012, Pakistan stood behind only Nigeria for countries with the highest rate of out-of-school children.
The situation is especially alarming in rural areas due to social and cultural obstacles. One of the most deplorable aspects is that in some places, particularly northern tribal areas, the education of girls is strictly prohibited on religious grounds. The situation becomes further critical there when we don’t find separate schools for girls and if some of the girls want to continue their education beyond primary level, then they have to go the boys school as most of the girls school are far away from small villages. While boys can commute easily to relatively larger towns and villages for furthering their education, it is difficult for girls to go to these schools as they will have to take a family member along with them to study in these schools, which is barely possible.
The education system in Pakistan is completely ill-equipped to fulfil its necessary function of nurturing intellectual minds, producing a skilled labour force which will work towards social development at large. The educational institutions fail to prepare the students to become productive members of a civil society. This in turn increases the chances of the country’s disenfranchised youth turning to terrorism in a misguided search for purpose and identity.
Madressahs represent a vast network of dilapidated schools focused on Islamic teaching often run on the philanthropy of foreign donors or some special groups. With the promise of free education, food and lodging it is not difficult to see why they are such an attractive prospect for poorer families. The underlying reason, which all the successive governments of Pakistan have tried to avoid to look at, is that these governments have failed to provide quality education at state expenses.
The recent series of attacks on various educational institutions has posed another serious problems too, ie, security of the institutions and the children who are studying there.
In the wake of the APS terrorist attack, the Pakistani government enacted a counter-terrorism strategy which was described by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as a ‘defining moment’ for the country. However, despite the passage of more than one year, it seems as if the fight against extremism still has a long way to go. While the National Action Plan (NAP) might represent a short to medium-term solution to the problem more effective and sustainable strategies need to be devised in near future.
There is need to make education a national priority, both in terms of improving standard and reviewing the curriculum. The National Action Plan addresses one of the primary issues – greater regulation of madressahs – however, little progress has been made in this regard, mainly due to strong opposition from religious parties.
Until the government takes up this issues more seriously, and defines corrective measure towards security of the institutions, our children will continue to be target of terrorist attacks.