Pakistan unlikely to achieve primary education-related MDGs: Report

Report states around 5.1 million children in Pakistan are out of school, which is second highest number in the world.

LAHORE: With Pakistan spending only 2.3% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on education, the country is unlikely to achieve its goal of providing primary education to all of its citizens by 2015, revealed the 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring report.

Pakistan committed itself to achieving the Universal Primary Education for All – one of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The report, expected to be launched on October 16, stated that around 5.1 million children in Pakistan are out of school, which is the second highest number in the world. The data also states that around 63 per cent of such children are girls.

According to the report findings the number of 15 to 19 year olds enrolled in the upper secondary level of education are roughly twice as high in urban areas as compared to that in rural areas.

The report further claimed that almost half of rural women in the country have never been to school, it adds that in urban areas that is true for only 14 per cent of men.

“Pakistan now has a lesser number of out-of-school children, 3 million less than the out-of-school children in 1999,” the report added.

The report further highlights that out of 775 million illiterate adults in the world, 50 million are from Pakistan – the third highest illiteracy in the world.

It also mentions that 36 per cent of Pakistanis, amounting to 12 million, have neither completed their primary schooling nor have the skills they would require in order to work. This makes Pakistan the second country with the highest number of unskilled young people in the world, just after India.