Girls’ education in Pakistan Progress, but in measured terms

The paper aims to provide insight into the low level of enrollment and retention rates of girls in schools across Pakistan by highlighting challenges faced by the community at large and the solutions that must be designed to counter these challenges. Pakistan currently reports 65: 40 male to female literacy ratio and the low level of female literacy rate is attributable to lower accessibility to girls school rather than cultural and religious values. Lack of girl’s secondary school in close vicinity hinders the ability of females to complete their education and this factor has inevitably contributed towards the rise in enrollment within religious institutes namely Madrasas that provide residential facilities. Despite policies designed to enhance quality of education for girl’s there is no marked improvement and this arises as a result of flawed planning, insufficient funding, failure to adopt a sector-wide approach and politics.

The paper recommends that government must prioritize educational objective and allocate greater funds for education. Accessibility of state schools must be enhanced and private schools must be provided with incentives to expand in remote areas that do not offer schooling facilities. Primary schools must be up scaled to provide secondary education and government must expend effort to identify the reason for increasing popularity of Madrasas.