Bajaur girls miss out on college education
Pakistani girls attend class at a school in Mingora. PHOTO: AFP
There is only one girls’ college for a large population of Bajaur tribal district in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), badly impacting the girls education as the college is centrally located in Khar, the district headquarters, and could not accessed by students from rural hinterlands.
Talking to The Express Tribune local residents said that girls’ education is not a top priority for the government as there were six boys colleges and just one girls college.
“When I passed matric I wanted to continue my studies but was unable to do so because I am a resident of Inayat Kalay in Khar and there is no nearby higher secondary school or college,” said a local student on the condition of anonymity, adding that the girls degree college is some seven-kilometer away from her village and being poor her parents could not afford the transportation charges.
“You cannot reach there using public transport. Whether public transport is safe and suitable for girls is yet another story,” she said, adding that there are hundreds of girls who could not pursue their dream of college education due to lack of girls colleges.
An official said that at least 500 girls terminate their studies after passing matric each year in Bajaur due to this.
When approached a tribal elder Shah Wali from Mamond tehsil said that Mamond is the largest and most populous tehsil of the tribal district with a total population of 3.11 lakh individuals as per the 2017 census.
“In the entire tehsil there is no girls higher secondary school nor is there any intermediate or degree college,” he noted, saying that there is one girls’ high school in the entire tehsil.
“There are villages which are without primary or middle schools. If there is a primary school, there is no middle school and if there is a middle school in a village, there is no primary school there,” he informed this correspondent.
Girls’ schools
The data collected by The Express Tribune shows that there are 360 boys primary schools in the district while the number of girls’ primary schools stands at just 184.
There are a total of 64 boys middle schools in the district and just 42 girls’ middle schools.
There are a total of 35 high schools for boys and just 14 girls’ high schools.
“We know that the population of girls is higher than the boys in Bajaur but there is a huge difference between their schools,” said an official of district education department.
He said that there are 274,418 children up to 10 year age in the district and out of it there are 139,985 girls and 134,496 boys.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 5th, 2023.