Only one in four schoolchildren make it to grade 10: report

 Only one in four children, who enroll in school in the first grade make it to grade 10 in Pakistan, said a report by an education campaigner outfit.

According to the report, in 2002-03, 2,833,726 children enrolled in the first grade but by 2011-12, only 718,945 remained in school.

In their latest report, titled Broken Promises: the crisis of Pakistan’s out-of-school children, education campaigners Alif Ailaan estimate that nearly half of all children who enroll in school in the first grade have dropped out by the time they get to the fifth grade.

The report also looks at the wider issue of out-of-school children (OOSCs) in Pakistan, and, seeking to dispel confusion around the actual number, looks at data from various sources in order to come up with a ballpark figure of 25 million.

This figure is closest to the National Education Management Information System’s estimate and paints a bleak picture of the state of education in the country.

The report also lays out reasons why children drop out of schools. Among girls, the need for hands to help with housework appears to be the top factor; while most boys are unwilling to go to school because they are simply not interested. This may be due to a lack of interest in the curriculum or unpleasant experiences with corporal punishment at the hands of teachers.

However, since Alif Ailaan do not conduct any primary research of their own and rely on secondary data available from official or reliable sources, the report does not look too deeply into the qualitative side of the matter and does not extrapolate regarding the motivation behind dropouts in any great detail.