ISLAMABAD: Rana Tanveer Hussain, minister of federal education and professional training, claimed on Friday that Pakistan had the world’s “most out-of-school children (OOSC)”.
The education minister stated that 23 million children in Pakistan attend school in answer to a query in the National Assembly regarding them not attending school.
The minister told the parliament that the government had a lofty goal: by June 30th, there would be no more than one out-of-school child for every one of the 70,000 in the Islamabad Capital Territory.
According to the minister, around 70,000 children in Islamabad are not currently enrolled in school, and every effort is being made to get them enrolled by June 30.
According to Tanveer, the government has started the Schools on Wheels programme in Islamabad to give education to children living in rural regions. Buses were modified into mobile schools for this use, complete with cutting-edge amenities including restrooms.
According to him, the ministry was preparing to offer such mobile buses to the kids in Balochistan and Sindh’s flood-affected areas on Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s orders.
He continued by saying that in addition to guaranteeing the delivery of 30 buses for the admirable cause, the World Bank (WB) had also praised the government’s action.
According to him, the WB also planned to implement such a system throughout Africa. If the provincial governments provided buses, the ministry was prepared to help other provinces, he said.
He claimed that in addition to focusing on remote learning, the government had also established the tele school system. In order to raise the nation’s literacy rate, it has also implemented an accelerated learning initiative with the help of the UK, he continued.
In response to a different query, he stated that in the previous nine months, the literacy rate increased by 0.8%.
According to UNICEF’s figures, 22.8 million children between the ages of 5 and 16 are not enrolled in school, accounting for 44% of all children in this age range.
Five million kids between the ages of 5 and 9 are not in school, and as they reach primary school age, the number of OOSC doubles, with 11.4 million teenagers between the ages of 10 and 14 not attending a formal school.
Gender, socioeconomic level, and geographic disparities are all considerable; in Sindh, 52% of the poorest children (including 58% of the girls) are not enrolled in school; in Balochistan, 78% of girls are not enrolled in school.
At the primary level, there are almost 10.7 million boys and 8.6 million girls enrolled. At the lower secondary level, there are only 3.6 million boys and 2.8 million girls.
