ISLAMABAD, Nov 27: Pakistan is capable of achieving Education For All (EFA) goals if the international community helps the country fill existing technical and financial gaps.

These views were expressed at a meeting of the international partners for Education for All Forum, which held in Islamabad on Wednesday.

The meeting was attended by representatives of Unesco, UNDP, Unicef, UNFPA and the World Bank. Tariq Farooq, the federal education secretary, Onder Yucer, the UNDP resident coordinator, Ms Ingeborg Breines, the Unesco director to Islamabad, and representatives of other organizations attended the meeting.

The Forum underlined the importance of coordination and cooperation in the efforts aimed at achieving EFA goals in Pakistan.

It said only 83 countries were on track to achieve EFA goals, while 43 countries had made progress but were likely to miss at least one goal by 2015 and 28 countries were in serious risk of not achieving any of the six goals set up by the EFA Forum.

The Forum noted with sadness that Pakistan was included in the last category. However, the Forum expressed the hope that efforts would be made to expedite the finalisation and funding of the National Plan of Action for EFA. In this connection, the World Bank Fast Tracking EFA initiative for Pakistan was also discussed.

Among the issues highlighted was gender equality at all levels of education in Pakistan. The Forum discussed the importance of removing barriers to girl’s education. “Closing the gender gap in enrolment, retention and completion rates in primary and secondary education is the main challenge.” The dynamics between access to school and the quality of education was also discussed in the meeting.