HOW can a country hope to become economically self-sufficient when at least a quarter of its child population has never seen the inside of a classroom? According to the government’s own figures, one in every four children in Pakistan has never stepped inside a school and learning poverty — the percentage of children unable to read an age-appropriate paragraph by the age of 10 — is 75pc in the country. The incumbent government seems to have a fair idea of the challenge and the federal education department has come up with a framework to re-enrol out-of-school children. There are at least 18.7m children who do not go to school — a figure that is equal to the total population of a small European country. According to the framework, a summary of which was presented to parliament, the government plans a phase-wise reopening of classrooms from the most to least disadvantaged areas of the country. The plan calls for providing dedicated — and cheap — transport services to female students and teachers of secondary schools, training support for teachers and bridge programmes for students resuming school.

All this may look good on paper but how effectively will the plan be implemented, especially since education is a provincial subject? Though the federal education ministry has vowed to work in collaboration with the provincial and district tiers of government, it is easier said than done because ground realities differ from one area to another while district administrations are non-existent. Secondly, data has also shown that those children who are in school are not learning well. The plan makes hardly any mention of the existing education infrastructure and how it can be improved. The government needs to further develop this plan to identify problem areas and chalk out clear short- and long-term targets and then devise a mechanism of collaboration for their implementation. Getting 18m children to school is a mammoth task that will require consistent and backbreaking efforts for many years by all levels of government.

Published in Dawn, March 11th, 2021