PESHAWAR: More than 1.8 million children are out of school in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) according to results from a recent survey, a local media outlet reported on Tuesday.
The survey was conducted by the Elementary and Secondary Education Department and had taken more than one year for completion at a cost of Rs227 Million.
The report shows 23 per cent of 15-17 year-old’s are out of school, with boys constituting 36 per cent and girls 64 per cent. 66 percent of girls and 34 per cent of boys have never enrolled at a school in KP.
1.152 (64 per cent) are considered ‘never enrolled’ and 0.648 million (36 per cent) as ‘previously enrolled’.
With regards to the causes behind these results, 31 per cent do not attend the school due to lack of interest, 17 per cent due to unavailability of schools and 28 per cent because of poverty.
The reason behind the lack of interest is that people in the province do not see long-term benefits of education or do not hold confidence in the ability of schools to provide quality education.
61.52 per cent of the students are being educated in public schools, 31.8 in private schools and 3 per cent in seminaries. Districts adjoining Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) have a higher rate of female enrollment in seminaries as compared to boys.
Abbottabad has the highest enrollment rate, followed by Haripur at second while Malakand and Chitral both stand at third place. On the other hand, Torghar and Shangla lag at the bottom.
Buner has the highest figure for those who were previously enrolled and then dropped out (16 per cent) while Shangla (8 per cent), Torghar (7 per cent) and Kohistan ( 4 per cent) have lowest rates.
A total of 4.52 million households were surveyed under the programme, showing that there were 6.3 million boys between the age of 0-17 and 5.7 million girls in the province.
