21% of school-aged children in Pakistan /do not receive an education, a right guaranteed in the country’s constitution.
57% of grade 5 children cannot read sentences or do two‐digit division.
Over half of all women in Pakistan are illiterate, in rural areas this increases to two-thirds of women.
Funding for schools has decreased 40% from 2.5% of GDP in 2005 to 1.5% just six years later, less than the annual subsidy given to the national airline.
Pakistan is the country with the third highest number of illiterate adults in the world.
There are 26 countries poorer than Pakistan that manage to educate more children in schools.
Why Education?
In Pakistan the wages of a literate person are 23% higher than those of an illiterate person.
Education holds the power to help people escape poverty, even in the face of adversity.
In a rural district in Sindh, where poverty increased over a 17-year period due to drought and water shortages, the heads of households who remained poor throughout had both the lowest initial level of education (by 1 year, on average) and the lowest increase over the period (less than 1 year). By contrast, the heads of households that escaped poverty had a higher initial level of education (1.8 years) as well as the highest increase over the period (by 2 years)
Working women with good literacy skills earned 95% more than women with weak literacy skills.
Education allows women to have a greater influence on family size.
In Pakistan, only 30% of women with no education believe they have a say over how many children they have, compared with 52% of women with primary education and 63% of those with lower secondary education.
If Pakistan were to have inequality in access to education, it would increase its economic growth by 1.7 percentage points.
