United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has issued an alarming report on International Children’s Day, revealing that around 22.8 million children are out of school in Pakistan.
As per details, the report issued by UNICEF highlights Pakistan as having the second highest number of out-of-school-children (OOSC) in the world.
The report, suggests that these 22.8 million children that are currently out of school in the country are in-fact 44 per cent of the country’s total population of children aged 5-16.
Meanwhile, around 5 million children from the age group 5-9 years are out of schools in Pakistan.
However, the number of OOSC doubles with the conclusion of primary education with 11.4 million children aged 10-14 being out of school.
Furthermore, UNICEF also underscored further disparities based on gender, socio-economic and geographical factors that also greatly effects children’s education.
Out of the total 52 per cent of children that are out of school in Sindh, girls constitute to 58 per cent of those children, whereas 78 per cent of girls are not enrolled in school in Balochistan.
Globally, COVID-19 pandemic has had extensive adverse effect on children’s education leaving 460 million without access to education and affecting 1.5 billion students in total.
