Sindh literacy rate among worst in country

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said on Tuesday that his government had rolled out multiple incentives including free textbooks, stipends for girl students, rehabiltiation of damaged school buildings, provision of furniture to the schools, opening of closed schools, and merit-based recruitment of teachers to bring out-of-school children back to the classroom.

"Education is the backbone of socio-economic development of any country and no nation can survive without tangible development and advancements in this sector," he said on Tuesday while addressing an certificat distribution ceremony among teachers organised by the school education department.

Sindh has one of the worst literary rates in the country, with one 2021 report putting the number of out-of-school children in the province as high as 44%.

"The total population of five- to 16-year-old [children] in Sindh is 14,675,864. [And] 44 per cent of this population is reported [to be] out of school. This amounts to a total of 6,484,007 children unable to go to school in the province," said the study by Pak Alliance for Maths and Science.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 8^th, 2023.