ACCORDING to Unesco’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2011, Pakistan, with one of the world’s largest out-of-school population of about 7.3 million, spends over seven times more on arms than on primary schools. The number of children out of school in the country may fall by one-fifth to 5.8 million by 2015. This should be a matter of grave concern and an alarming situation for the government and the institutions of the state.

Pakistan is facing violent internal insurgency. Hundreds of schools have been blown up in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and people are being killed daily in different areas. Brutal killing of Federal Minister for Minority Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti and blast in Akhund Panjo Baba Mosque in Akbarpura area in Nowshehra are recent examples.

The provincial and the federal government should immediately devise a strategy to take steps to boost education for poor children in the country, in general, and in Balochistan and rural areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and south Punjab, in particular, where people suffer the most. Education is the only way through which we can fight the menace of terrorism.

According to Aristotle: “Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.”

HAFIZ MUHAMMAD IRFAN Islamabad