Looking at education data across South Asia. Nothing will prepare us for what Pakistan’s numbers reveal: a country systematically failing its children at catastrophic scale, with consequences that will define whether it survives this century as a functional state.
This isn’t activist hyperbole. It’s what happens when you follow the data from primary school to university, and realize you’re not looking at an education system—you’re looking at an elimination process.
The Children We Never Taught
Let me start with a number that should horrify every Pakistani: 26 million children aged 5-16 are currently out of school. That’s according to UNICEF’s latest analysis and the Pakistan Education Statistics 2021-22, the most recent comprehensive data available from the Academy of Educational Planning and Management. The situation has worsened up from 22.8 million just three years ago.
That represents approximately 44% of school-age children the second-highest out-of-school population in the world after Nigeria. Think about that. Nearly half of Pakistani children are growing up without formal education.
But here’s what troubles me most: According to UNICEF’s 2023 analysis, approximately three-quarters of these children have never enrolled at all. This isn’t primarily a dropout crisis—it’s an access crisis. We’re not even getting these kids through the school door.
The disparities are stark. In Balochistan, over 70% of children are out of school. For girls in rural Sindh and Balochistan, the figure approaches 80%. This is educational apartheid by geography and gender.
The Infrastructure Nobody Talks About:
The crisis extends beyond enrollment numbers to the physical reality of where education happens or doesn’t happen. According to the Pakistan Education Statistics 2021-22, the infrastructure gaps are staggering and vary dramatically by province.
In Punjab, despite having the most developed education infrastructure, approximately 18% of primary schools lack electricity, 23% have no boundary walls, and 31% operate without proper sanitation facilities. Yet Punjab represents the best-case scenario.
Sindh’s numbers reveal deeper neglect: nearly 40% of schools lack electricity, 47% have no drinking water facilities, and shockingly, 52% of government schools operate without toilets—a particularly acute barrier for girls entering adolescence. In rural Sindh, single-room schools teaching multiple grades simultaneously are the norm, not the exception.
Balochistan faces catastrophic infrastructure deficits. Over 60% of schools lack electricity, 58% have no boundary walls (critical for parents’ willingness to send daughters), and approximately 65% operate without basic sanitation. Perhaps most damning: 45% of sanctioned teaching positions remain vacant, meaning thousands of school buildings sit underutilized or entirely empty.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa shows marginally better statistics than Balochistan but remains dire: 35% of schools lack electricity, 42% have no drinking water, and in merged tribal districts, these figures exceed 70%. The provincial education department’s own assessment found that approximately 30% of registered schools are either non-functional or operate below minimum standards.
These aren’t just statistics about missing amenities they’re explanations for dropout. A teenage girl will not attend a school without toilets. Parents will not send children to buildings without boundary walls in insecure areas. Teachers will not travel to posts in schools lacking basic facilities, leaving positions vacant.
We’ve built an infrastructure of failure: schools that exist on paper but not in practice, buildings without teachers, classrooms without electricity, and facilities that actively repel the students they’re meant to serve.
The Great Winnowing
For those lucky enough to start school, the journey resembles a gauntlet designed to shed students at every turn.
Pakistan’s National Education Management Information System tracking data reveals:
About 67% of students complete primary education (Grade 5)
Only 46% reach middle school completion (Grade 8)
Merely 36% finish secondary school (Matric/Grade 10)
Just 26% complete higher secondary (Intermediate/Grade 12)
This means three out of four children who start Grade 1 never make it to Grade 12.
I want you to picture a classroom of 40 first-graders, bright-eyed and hopeful. By the time those same students should be graduating high school, only 10 remain. The other 30 are gone—working in fields, married off, or simply absorbed into the informal economy.
This attrition isn’t random. It accelerates precisely when children should be gaining employable skills. The dropout rate spikes after Grade 5, when schools become scarcer and costs rise. It spikes again after Grade 8, when the opportunity cost of education becomes unbearable for poor families.
We lose future nurses before they can study biology. Future technicians before they can learn math. Future teachers before they can finish being students.
The University Mirage
By the time we reach higher education, we’re down to the survivors—and there aren’t many.
Pakistan has approximately 1.3 million students enrolled in universities (Higher Education Commission data, 2022-23) out of a population exceeding 240 million. That’s roughly 9% gross enrollment in tertiary education, compared to 28% in India, 51% in China, and 88% in South Korea.
Annual university graduates number around 450,000 according to recent HEC figures. In a country of 240 million, this is not mass higher education. This is elite selection.
And here’s the cruel irony: even this narrow stream of graduates faces unemployment. The Labour Force Survey 2020-21 showed that unemployment among degree holders aged 20-24 was approximately 16%—substantially higher than those with only primary or secondary education.
We’ve created a system that fails the uneducated by not educating them, and fails the educated by not employing them. This is comprehensive dysfunction.
The Demographic Time Bomb
Pakistan’s median age is 23 years. Approximately 64% of our population is under 30. Each year, roughly 3-4 million young people enter working age.
In any rational development model, this should be our greatest asset a demographic dividend that powered East Asia’s rise and is currently lifting Bangladesh and Vietnam.
But a demographic dividend requires one fundamental input: educated, skilled young people.
Without it, you don’t get a dividend. You get a demographic burden.
Pakistan’s current trajectory projects:
287 million people by 2030
338 million by 2040
380 million by 2050
We will be the fourth most populous country on Earth. But on current trends, we will have:
35-40 million children out of school by 2030 (proportional growth)
Over 150 million working-age adults by 2050 with inadequate or zero education
A labor force unable to compete in an increasingly automated, knowledge-intensive global economy
This isn’t hypothetical. We can see it happening already.
What the Future Holds If We Don’t Change Course
Let me be specific about what “business as usual” means:
By 2035: The children currently out of school will be adults aged 20-25. That’s 26 million young people entering their prime working years functionally illiterate, competing for jobs in an economy that requires at minimum digital literacy and secondary-level numeracy. Most will end up in the informal sector—hawking goods, doing manual labor, trapped in poverty. This cohort’s lifetime earnings will be perhaps one-fifth of what educated workers earn, cementing intergenerational poverty.
By 2040: Pakistan will have a working-age population exceeding 200 million, but with human capital indicators among the world’s lowest. The World Bank’s Human Capital Index already ranks Pakistan at 0.41 (where 1.0 represents full health and education). At current rates of improvement—or deterioration—we’ll have the largest pool of unskilled labor in the world outside sub-Saharan Africa, in an era when manufacturing is automated and services require digital skills.
By 2050: With 380 million people,
Pakistan will face challenges no country has successfully managed: a population larger than the United States’, but with an education profile closer to low-income African states, on a land area one-ninth the size, with water scarcity accelerating and climate pressures mounting.
The social consequences are predictable because they’re already visible:
Youth radicalization fills the vacuum left by absent opportunity—we’ve seen this pattern repeat
Mass irregular migration desperate families sending sons to Libya, Turkey, Europe on deadly journeys
Rising crime and social breakdown unemployment correlates directly with violent crime rates
Political instability, uneducated, unemployed populations are easy prey for demagogues and extremists
Weakened state capacity a poorly educated population cannot staff a modern bureaucracy, judiciary, or military
The Economic Calculus Is Brutal
Every year of schooling increases earnings by roughly 10% globally. Every year of missed schooling compounds lost income across a lifetime.
Consider: a child who drops out after Grade 5 instead of completing Grade 12 loses approximately 70% of lifetime earning potential. Multiply that by millions, across decades, and you’re looking at trillions of dollars in lost GDP by mid-century.
But the damage goes beyond individual income. Uneducated populations can’t:
Innovate or adopt new technologies
Increase agricultural productivity
Staff advanced manufacturing
Build service industries
Generate tax revenue sufficient for state functions
Pakistan’s GDP per capita is currently around $1,600. Bangladesh, which was poorer than Pakistan in 1990, is now at $2,700—largely because it invested in mass basic education and skills training for garment workers.
Without urgent reform, Pakistan’s per capita income in 2050 will be comparable to today’s poorest countries.
Why This Isn’t Just About Money
Pakistan spends approximately 0.8% of GDP on education—according to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2024-25, a historic low that has plummeted from 2% just six years ago. This is less than one-sixth of the UNESCO recommended minimum of 5%, and catastrophically below regional peers like India (4.6%) and Bangladesh (3.9%).
But here’s the terrifying reality: even this microscopic investment is declining. We are moving backward while our neighbors surge forward.
Funding matters. But money alone won’t fix this.
The deeper problems are structural and political:
Compulsory education laws exist but are not enforced—no penalties for parents who don’t enroll children
No accountability for dropout—schools face no consequences when students vanish
Curriculum disconnected from employment—students memorize theory but learn no practical skills
Degree inflation without quality control, universities proliferate, but learning outcomes are dismal
Zero strategic planning no one is mapping education outputs to labor market needs
We have an education sector that measures inputs (schools built, teachers hired, students enrolled) while remaining willfully blind to outcomes (learning achieved, skills gained, employment secured).
The Choice Before Us
I’ve painted a dark picture because the data demands it. But this is not inevitable.
Countries have turned around education systems at scale. South Korea went from mass illiteracy to universal secondary education in 30 years. Vietnam transformed its education system in two decades.
It requires political will, sustained investment, and ruthless focus on outcomes.
For Pakistan, that means:
Immediately:
Enforce compulsory education with penalties. Provide stipends to poor families to offset opportunity costs. Build schools in underserved areas especially for girls.
Short-term (1-5 years): Redesign secondary curriculum around employable skills. Massively expand vocational and technical education. Create apprenticeship systems linking students to employers.
Medium-term (5-10 years): Reform higher education to focus on quality over quantity. Close or merge underperforming universities. Tie accreditation to graduate employment rates. Invest in community colleges and polytechnics.
Long-term (10-20 years): Build an education-to-employment pipeline where dropout is rare, skills are marketable, and degrees signal genuine capability.
None of this is radical. It’s what functional states do.
A Final Thought
When I think about those 26 million children currently out of school. They didn’t choose this. They were born into a system that has chosen, through action and inaction, not to educate them.
Every one represents lost potential a doctor who will never diagnose, an engineer who will never design, a teacher who will never inspire, an entrepreneur who will never innovate.
Multiply those losses across decades, and you’re not just looking at an education crisis.
You’re looking at a nation choosing to fail.
Pakistan stands at a crossroads. We can treat education as the existential priority it is restructure, invest, enforce, and measure relentlessly.
Or we can continue as we are, adding millions more to the uneducated masses each year, watching our demographic dividend become a demographic disaster, and wondering why the 21st century left us behind.
The data is clear. The trajectory is set. The consequences are coming.
The only question is whether we’ll act before it’s too late.
Fazeel Asif : The author is a senior leader with 30+ years across public and private sectors. Former Chairman of Punjab CBD, PBIT, and CM’s Taskforce on Governance & Reforms. He can be reached out at Fazeel63@gmail.com