Education Atlas shows negligible rise in school enrollment

The Atlas is the only national publication providing education indicators by geographic location down to tehsil level

ISLAMABAD: School enrollment remains a major area of concern for Pakistan, according to the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training and the World Food Programme‘s (WFP) fifth edition of the Pakistan Education Atlas.

The report launched on Tuesday finds that with just over half of school-aged children (50.8 per cent) are registered, representing a marginal increase from 50.1 per cent in 2010.



It uses data contained in Pakistan Education Statistics 2014-15 launched earlier this year.

The Atlas is the only national publication providing education indicators by geographic location down to the tehsil level, enabling stakeholders to identify priority areas for intervention and resource allocation.

The report shows adult literacy at 57 per cent with great gender disparity; literacy in women is hovering at 45 percent against 68 per cent among men.

Enrolment is higher for primary education, with a net enrolment rate of 72 per cent. This means that 6.08 million children (28 per cent of the total) aged 5-9 years are currently out of school, down from 6.16 million in 2013/14. Of the total, 2.55 million are boys and 3.53 million are girls and as many as 44 percent of them live in Punjab.



The report also reveals that only 69 per cent of students who start Grade 1 stay on till Grade 5.

The atlas also shows that 29% of primary schools in Pakistan are run by one teacher each. As many as 54% schools in Balochistan are single-teacher schools followed by Sindh 47%, G-B 35%, K-P 19%, Punjab 15% and Fata and Azad Kashmir 7% each.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 28^th, 2016.