Pakistan is facing a severe crisis of out-of-school children, with 25.3 million children aged 5 to 16 currently not attending school. This represents 36% of the country’s school-age population, according to a recent analysis report by the Pak Alliance for Maths and Science (PAMS).
The report, titled “The Missing Third of Pakistan”, provides the first comprehensive examination of out-of-school children (OOSC) at the tehsil level, utilizing data from the 2023 Population Census. It highlights a troubling state of the education system, noting that a staggering 74% of these children live in rural areas.
Efforts to boost enrollment in these regions are hindered by significant obstacles, including limited access to schools, poverty, and social barriers. The data indicates a growing rural-urban divide in educational access, with approximately 18.8 million out-of-school children residing in rural areas alone.
The report also reveals that girls make up 53% of the out-of-school population, a situation particularly dire in rural areas where female literacy rates are alarmingly low. In some tehsils, over 80% of girls aged 5 to 16 have never attended school, underscoring the entrenched gender inequality in educational access.
Even in major cities like Karachi and Lahore, which are provincial capitals with greater educational resources, substantial numbers of children remain out of school. Karachi alone has nearly 1.8 million children who are not enrolled, further emphasizing the seriousness of the crisis.
