Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
169
Out of school children (OOSC): As a household survey, the ASER is able to report on the learning
achievements of OOSC. Unsurprisingly, their achievements are lower than children attending
school.
Literacy. 60% of OOSC (aged 5-16 years old) in urban areas and as high as 67% of OOSC (Aged 5-
16 years old) in rural areas cannot read any words or sentences (in Urdu).
Numeracy. 57% of urban OOSC (aged 5-16 years old) and 67%of rural OOSC (aged 5-16 years old)
cannot recognize numbers or make a simple calculation.
Challenges, Barriers and Bottlenecks
Access to schooling by children in Pakistan is confronted with challenges both on the demand side
(perception of education, child labour, economic barriers including transportation, early
marriage, violence, lack of community/family engagement) and the supply-side (low quality due
to teacher training issues, poor and unsafe school environment, outdated curriculum, governance
issues such as lack of effective accountability and leadership or lack of involvement of community
and parents in school management, as well as environmental challenges).
Demand-Side Barriers427
Culture. Parental attitudes:
Low demand due to mismatch of school skills and expected job. Some parents may not prioritise
sending their children to school for one of a number of reasons. For instance, the opportunity cost
of sending one’s child to school increases as the quality of education provided declines since it
lowers the parents’ perceived/real rates of return to educating their children. This perception of
low returns to education is also generated by the mismatch of skills learned in schools with the
skills needed for the jobs that parents expect their children to have (low skilled jobs such as
agriculture labourer, shops etc). The school’s curriculum and skills offers are not deemed
desirable by some parents. Another potential disincentive to schooling is the medium of
instruction not being the language spoken at home. This creates difficulties for the child’ s learning
achievement. In certain regions where Urdu is not spoken, the school curriculum may seem
irrelevant to some parents, especially those from poor backgrounds with low educational
attainments. Traditionally, some children may be expected to work in the family business and
parents may not deem high levels of education necessary, leading to low enrolment rates in the
last grades of primary and secondary school.
Poverty, disasters and migration: In rural areas, parents may simply not have the time and
capacity to supervise their children’s education, leading to a higher likelihood of drop-out. In
addition, migration due to poverty (families moving to find job opportunities) or natural disasters
negatively impact enrolments of children as they are frequently uprooted from their schools.
Pakistan has nomadic tribes in both urban and rural environments, and just like economic
migrants’ children, their children are also very likely to never enrol or to drop-out of school.
427 most from UNICEF (2013)