Nearly 22.5 million children out of school in Pakistan, says HRW report

LONDON: Nearly 22.5 million of Pakistan’s children are out of school with the majority of them girls, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released today.

The 111-page report titled “Shall I Freed My Daughter, or Educate Her?: Barriers to Girls’ Education in Pakistan” concluded that many children have no access to education, including because of shortage of government schools, especially for girls.

The report said thirty-two percent of primary school age girls are out of school in Pakistan, compared with 21 percent of boys as by ninth grade, only 13 percent of girls are still in school.

“The Pakistan government’s failure to educate children is having a devastating impact on millions of girls,” said Liesl Gerntholtz, women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch.   “Many of the girls we interviewed are desperate to study, but instead are growing up without the education that would help them have options for their future.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed 209 people for the report – most of them with girls who never attended school or were unable to complete their education, and their families – in all four of Pakistan’s provinces: Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Sindh. Human Rights Watch also interviewed parents, educators, experts, and activists, and visited schools.

Among the factors keeping girls out of school, Human Rights Watch found, are the government’s under-investment in schools, lack of schools, prohibitive school fees and related costs, corporal punishment, and a failure to enforce compulsory education. Human Rights Watch also found poor quality within both government and low-cost private schools, a lack of government regulation of private schools, and corruption.

In addition to these factors within the education system, girls are also blocked from attending school by external factors including child labor, gender discrimination, child marriage, sexual harassment, insecurity, and attacks on education.

The Pakistan government has consistently invested far less in education than is recommended by international standards. As of 2017, Pakistan was spending less than 2.8 percent of its gross domestic product on education – far below the recommended 4 to 6 percent – leaving the government’s education system severely under-funded. Government schools are in such short supply that even in Pakistan’s major cities, many children cannot reach a school on foot safely in a reasonable amount of time. The situation is far worse in rural areas. And there are many more schools for boys than for girls.

Here are the Key Recommendations the HRW listed in its report

To the Federal Government

• Increase expenditure on education in line with UNESCO recommended levels needed to fulfill obligations related to the right to education.
• Strengthen oversight of provincial education systems’ progress toward achieving parity between girls and boys and universal primary and secondary education for all children, by requiring provinces provide accurate data on girls’ education, monitoring enrolment and attendance by girls, and setting targets in each province.
• Strengthen the federal government’s role in assisting provincial governments in provision of education, with the goal of ending gender disparities in all provinces.
• Work with provincial governments to improve the quality of government schools and quality assurance of private schools.
• Raise the national minimum age of marriage to 18 with no exceptions and develop and implement a national action plan to end child marriage, with the goal of ending all child marriage by 2030, as per Sustainable Development Goal target 5.3.
• Endorse and implement the Safe Schools Declaration, an international political agreement to protect schools, teachers, and students during armed conflict.

To Provincial Governments

• Direct the provincial education authority to make girls’ education a priority within the education budget, in regard to construction and rehabilitation of schools, training and recruitment of female teachers, and provision of supplies, to address the imbalance between the participation of girls and boys in education.
• Strengthen enforcement of anti-child labour laws.
• Instruct police officials to work with schools to ensure the safety of students, including monitoring potential threats to students, teachers and schools, and working to prevent harassment of students, especially girls.
• Ensure that anyone encountering corruption by government education officials has access to effective and responsive complaint mechanisms.