Adviser Education (KP) Zia Ullah Bangash Just Made A HUGE Announcement & We Promise It’ll Send You Over The Moon!

That 22.8 million Pakistani children are out of school is not exactly news.

For decades the Pakistani civil society has been urging the government to take heed of the country’s education emergency by allocating more resources and spending them effectively.

Given that almost 53% of Pakistan’s 22.8 million out-of-school children comprise of girls, the Pakistani civil society has been increasingly bringing the importance of educating girls to the government’s notice.

Read: PTI Government Has Introduced National Education Policy Framework 2018 & This Is What We Think About It

It seems that the loud campaigning by the civil society is finally bearing fruit – at least at the level of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

In a seminar organized recently by Blue Veins in Peshawar, the Adviser to Chief Minister on Education, Zia Ullah Bangash announced that 70% of the education development budget will be allocated for girls education!

This is truly an unprecedented step and one that was direly needed.

This is especially true since at all levels in KP, (i.e. primary, middle, high and higher secondary), government owned girls’ schools are far less than those for boys.

If the funds allocated by the provincial government are effectively spent, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is likely to see a radical improvement in the state of girls’ education in just one year!

KP Government must get a much deserved shabash for prioritizing girls’ education, but what about other provinces?

Now that the Government of Khyber Pakhtunkwa has taken lead in sending our little girls to school, the inevitable question is: what about the rest of the provinces?

Just as KP, other parts of the country are also lagging when it comes to education generally and girls’ education particularly.

Read: Karishma’s Diary: “How Education Helped Me Find My Voice”

To give a quick snapshot, the enrollment rate of girls stands at 72% at the primary level – which is not too bad – but this drastically falls to 45% at the middle school level and condenses to merely 27% at the secondary level.

This clearly shows that while Pakistan has made some headway in terms of primary education, when it comes to secondary and higher secondary levels, a lot needs to still be done!

And so, we dearly, dearly hope that Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan will take a leaf from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s policy and prioritize girls’ education to end Pakistan’s taleemi crises once and for all.