In August 2012, after returning to Pakistan from a high school exchange program in the United States, I started an evening learning center in my neighborhood on the outskirts of Pakistan’s southwestern port city of Gwadar. Twelve girls, between 10 and 14 years of age, came to my home five days a week to learn English and basic computer skills. In the mornings, they were attending classes at a nearby public primary school.
All the children came from families that had moved from remote villages to Gwadar in the early 2000s, hoping that the Chinese-funded port and development would bring them better opportunities. However, quality education, even at the primary level, was out of reach.
Their school, like most public schools in Pakistan, did not have enough teachers, books, and classrooms, or the kind of teaching that encourages critical thinking and creativity. For more than 200 children, from grades one to five, the school had only three classrooms and four teachers. With limited staff, space, and resources, students were pushed toward rote learning with no space for curiosity and reason.
But despite these challenges, these girls were eager to learn and make a future for themselves and their families.
In their little “classroom” in the evenings, the girls learned a new language, and also discussed best practices in learning, for example, an inquiry-based learning environment where questions were encouraged. It made them want to replicate this approach in their school, but the limited resources and a rigid framework could not support such learning.
Only a few of these girls were fortunate enough to complete their eighth grade at a secondary school in Gwadar city. One of them went on to score the highest marks in the district board exam, which also earned her a scholarship. However, by the time she completed tenth grade, she was married off and sent to her native village of Dasht. Most of the girls had a similar fate. Despite their love for learning, none could go for higher education.
This is not an isolated story but a reminder of a larger problem across Pakistan. Although it has been more than a decade, the condition of the majority of public schools in the country and the overall education system has not changed much. Social barriers to girls’ education remain an everyday reality.
Today, millions of children in Pakistan continue to be denied the right to an education and a future with opportunities they deserve. According to a U.N. Development Program report, only 6 percent of the total population has more than 12 years of education, and 29 percent of young people have no formal education at all. Pakistan’s education system is an abject failure, as it has left out a large portion of its population from accessing even basic reading skills.
This is also concerning, given Pakistan’s demographics: 64 percent of the population is under the age of 30, with 29 percent between the ages of 15 and 29. The number is expected to grow in the next two decades, which is an opportunity as well as a challenge. While the young population may potentially support economic growth, a population that is largely uneducated, unskilled, and unprepared for any productive work becomes a burden for an already struggling economy.
Pakistan is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children (UNCRC), which is a comprehensive framework for the protection of children’s welfare, including their right to quality education. But 25.3 million children between the ages of 5 and 16 are out of school, the second-highest number globally after Nigeria.
Girls in Pakistan are far more vulnerable to losing out on schooling. They often drop out or miss school because of cultural and religious restrictions, lack of infrastructure and teachers, early marriage, the burden of domestic work, and constraints on mobility. A World Bank report pointed out that these problems are responsible for lower enrollment rates, higher dropout rates, and fewer opportunities to compete for higher education or make a career among girls.
Around 19 million girls in the country were married before their 18th birthday. While the situation of girls’ education is far from satisfactory across Pakistan, the situation in Balochistan is the most severe, where 78 percent of girls are out of school.
Worryingly, even those who are enrolled in public schools, both girls and boys, are not doing well. 77 percent of children in Pakistan are facing what the World Bank defines as a “learning poverty,” the inability of a child to read and understand a simple text by age ten. 82 percent of grade three children are unable to read a story in Urdu, with over 87 percent unable to do a two-digit division.
A research study by Pakistan Foundational Learning Hub identified such learning shortcomings as a crisis where children are denied an opportunity to gain foundational learning skills in the early years. This, in turn, makes learning and development harder later on, and deprives children of critical thinking and eventually of future productivity.
Poor infrastructure; fewer than needed, untrained, and ghost teachers; ghost schools; children learning in a language that is not their mother tongue; and limited resources and budget are just the tip of the iceberg. Ghost teachers and institutions that only exist on paper are big contributors to Pakistan’s education crisis. With the quality of education in public schools decreasing over time, parents are less willing to send their children there. Consequently, private schools have become more popular, making even basic education available only to the privileged.
Private schools do not solve the education crisis. Rather, they leave the majority of children out of the school system. There is no doubt that education is a driver of social and economic development. For a country like Pakistan that is plagued with illiteracy and economic problems, prioritizing education, its budget, and policies around it is the only way out. Quality education can not only support economic stability in the long term, but can also improve gender equality in Pakistan.