A report exposing Pakistan’s education system has said that 45 percent of Pakistani students cannot read a single sentence of their mother tongue, Urdu. According to this report exposing Pakistan’s faulty education system, 45 percent of students in Pakistan cannot read a single sentence in Urdu and their regional languages, while 44 percent of students cannot read a sentence in English.
This was revealed in a report compiled by the Idara-e-Taleem-o-Agahi (ITA), reports the Daily Times, which showed 59 percent by the age of 16 in 18,592 households, 937 villages and 901 government schools and 463 private schools. A total of 52948 children were assessed including male 41 percent female.
The situation is even worse in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) as 86% of the total 52,948 children have language and arithmetic proficiency by the age of 16. The ITA report said that the proportion of out-of-school children has increased as compared to the previous years.
It said, “27 per cent of children were reported to have dropped out of school, which has increased significantly from 9 per cent in a short period of time, while 14 per cent have never attended school and 13 per cent have various Left out of school due to reasons.”
The report also revealed that the learning levels of Class 5 and Class 3 children declined in all three competencies as 50 percent of Class 5 children told stories in Urdu/Pashto at Class 2 level compared to 55 percent in 2019 can read. As per the Daily Times report, Class 3 children can read stories in Urdu/Pashto compared to 19 per cent in 2019.
The report said, “The level of English learning has declined as 54 per cent of Class 5 children can read sentences as compared to 60 per cent in 2019, while only 15 per cent of Class 3 children in Class 2 compared to 21 per cent in 2019 level sentences.