More than 130 million girls around the world will not attend school today
KARACHI: This is in response to Baela Raza Jamil’s article titled ‘Making girls’ education a national priority’ published in this paper on February 6. Pakistan is a country with a staggering number of out-of-school children and owing to its conservative setup there are a higher percentage of girls being out of school than boys. This may be because girls are married off earlier, made to stop schooling once they hit puberty or because most families don’t have the means to educate all of their children and so choose to educate boys as they are considered to be the future breadwinners.
The writer of the article highlights the findings of the Education Fund Forum’s report to emphasise her point for educating girls in the country. As she mentions “all 193 UN member states have committed to ensuring that their children receive quality education by 2030, as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. And yet, over 130 million girls around the world will not attend school today as over half of all school-age girls fail to achieve minimum proficiency in reading and mathematics. Let’s put this into perspective for Pakistan: almost three out of 10 girls that are of primary school age across Pakistan will be sitting at home today, deprived of their basic right to education.” This is a huge number, which means almost half of the country’s population is deprived of their basic right to education.
Ghazanfar Ali
Published in The Express Tribune, February 8th, 2019.
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