Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
173
Table 30 Existence of SMCs, PTAs, school councils or other bodies (head teachers),
percentages
School type Response Province Pakistan
Balochistan KP Punjab Sindh
Government Yes 68% 89% 99% 94% 93%
No 32% 11% 1% 6% 7%
Private Yes 50% 48% 18% 59% 39%
No 50% 52% 82% 41% 61%
Source: Alif Ailaan (2014)
Shortages in supply of schools and bottlenecks at the secondary level: Looking at the supply
of Formal Educational Institutions in Pakistan, a school supply bottleneck is noticeable at the
secondary level (middle schools and high schools). Nationally, there are approximately 146,185
primary schools, 42,147 middle schools and 29,874 high schools. (se The drop in the
number of schools at middle and high school level is extremely sharp. Looking at just primary,
middle and high school numbers (218,206 schools), primary schools represent 67% of basic
education schools, middle schools 18% and high schools only 14%. The low secondary school
enrolment and attendance rates seen in section 2 are therefore a combination of both low supply
of schools at secondary level and low demand for schooling based on factors such as child labour
or early marriage affecting older children.
Table 31 Number of Formal Educational Institutions in Pakistan 2013
Balochistan FATA GB KC KP Punjab Sindh AJ&K Pakistan
Primary
schools
11,079 4,836 11,079 364 24,991 52,414 46,759 4,852 146,185
Middle
schools
1,406 616 427 170 4,921 26,831 5,928 1,848 42,147
High schools 917 439 268 248 3,774 17,958 5,189 1,081 29,874
Colleges 68 62 35 40 202 1,241 471 199 2,318
Universities 6 - 1 16 29 43 40 6 141
Source: AEPAM (2017)
Language: As seen earlier, public schools usually use Urdu as the language of instruction and
introduce English at a later age. This creates difficulties in learning for students’ whose mother
tongue is different and difficulties for the teachers themselves. Section 2 showed that not speaking
Urdu at home constitutes a barrier to access to education.
The Alif Ailaan organisation conducted a teachers’ survey in 2014443. Many teachers complained
about having to teach English as they do not have the skills for it or must translate twice (from
English to Urdu then Urdu to the local language) in order to communicate well with students.
Given that private schools market themselves as ‘English medium’, private schools teachers in the
survey were less critical of the English language policies by the provinces.
443 Alif Ailaan (2014)