SINDH’S five-year pledge with the UN to bring children into school is welcome, but the province never had any shortage of plans. What it lacks is progress. Unicef estimates that 7.4m children aged five to 16 in Sindh — 44pc of the age group — are out of school. The 2023 census found that 6.6m children in this bracket had never attended school at all, showing that the problem is not one of retention. This is damning because the Sindh Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2013, guarantees free schooling to every child aged five to 16 and obliges the government to ensure admission and attendance. There has been movement: girls’ stipends, school-meal schemes, teacher-led school budgets and non-formal education programmes address barriers. Yet the scale is inadequate. In 2024-25, Sindh had 1,152 non-formal centres serving 58,411 learners, while 14,343 schools damaged in the 2022 floods were still awaiting restoration in March.

The new plan must be judged by children reached, not programmes announced. Sindh needs a district-by-district register of out-of-school children, with local authorities responsible for finding them, identifying why they are excluded and getting them into an appropriate learning pathway. Poverty, child labour, distance, unsafe travel for girls, disability and missing middle and secondary schools require different responses. Stipends and meals should be expanded to improve attendance; reliable transport is needed for communities without nearby schools; and accelerated learning must be scaled for older children who cannot simply enter age-inappropriate classes. Flood reconstruction needs firmer deadlines and public progress reporting. Teacher deployment should follow enrolment needs, while schools must be evaluated for learning, not just attendance. Above all, annual district targets should be published and independently verified. Thirteen years after Sindh legislated a right to education, millions of children are still out of school. Another five-year plan deserves support only if it converts that right into a classroom seat.

Published in Dawn, August 24th, 2026