The Civil Society Organizations (CSO) Friday urged all political parties to put girl’s education and gender parity in education at the top of their agenda in upcoming polls and emphasized that issue required commitment from all political fronts to ensure a fair and inclusive educational landscape in the country.
The demand was made during a joint press conference held here at Peshawar Press Club by Blue Veins and Pakistan Education Champions.
Addressing the press conference, Co-Convener of Pakistan Education Champion Network (PECN), Qamar Naseem said the plight of education, especially of girls, was very dismal and needed measures on war footing to overcome the gap.
Quoting a survey finding of Benazir Income Support Program, he said in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), a staggering 4.7 million children between the ages of five to sixteen years were out of school, with 2.9 million of them being girls.
This issue is particularly prominent in the province’s merged districts, where 74.4 percent of the out-of-school children are girls.
He said the drop out of girls from primary to middle level was 60 percent while only 18 to 19 percent of girls could reach to 10th grade.
The estimates of Benazir Income Support Programme were made in year 2019 while the devastating flood of October 2022 also affected education of thousands of already enrolled students, both boys and girls, by damaging a large number of education institutions in the country, he added.
The Elementary and Secondary Education (E&SE) Department estimates that an additional 15,000 government schools were needed to accommodate the 4.7 million out-of-school children in KP.
If government spent all of the educational budget on construction of schools, only 300 schools could be constructed on annual basis so how many funds and years would be required to construct 15000 schools, he questioned.—APP
