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Archives of Business Research – Vol. 10, No. 10
Publication Date: October 25, 2022
DOI:10.14738/abr.1010.13211. Shoro, I., Tagar, H. K., Rubab, R. K., & Naveed, M. (2022). Don't Drop Me Outside in 21st Century: A Cry from the Indus Valley Region.
Archives of Business Research, 10(10). 19-25.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Don't Drop Me Outside in 21st Century: A Cry from the Indus
Valley Region
Iram Shoro
Former Senior Banker in Sindh Bank LTD
Government of Sindh Finance Department Karachi, Pakistan
Hamzo Khan Tagar
Director Public Private Partnership Node
School Education & Literacy Department
Government of Sindh, Karachi Pakistan
Rahila Khatoon Rubab
Data Analyst, Public Private Partnership Node
School Education & Literacy Department
Government of Sindh, Karachi Pakistan
Muhammad Naveed
Project Manager Sindh Secondary Education
Improvement Project School Education & Literacy Department
Government of Sindh, Karachi Pakistan
ABSTRACT
Quality education for all is the 4th universal agenda of sustainable development
goals is a comprehensive plan of United Nations Organizations (UNO), but still,
millions of schools aged eligible children are out of school globally, particularly the
majority of belongs to African and south Asian regions which demand us to analysis
the situations and sort out the key challenges and policy flaws. There is a need of
the hour to formulate robust policy documents and well-implementation strategies
to save the future of tomorrow’s people in greater human development interest.
Pakistan is dealing with this chronic problem and at least 22 million Pakistanis
children are out of school in the 21st century. The qualitative analysis concludes that
scarce allocation and its time-barred utilization system with massive
mismanagement hampered the above-referred agenda of human development. The
study finds that development allocation fared poorly; a lower literacy rate
contributes to unskilled labor, spreading absolute poverty and inequality in the
country. The identified social ills spread negative trends in a society like street
crime, terrorism, and slow growth in the economy because of the out of school
children. There is an urgent need to adopt inclusive development policies,
practices, and strategies with a participatory approach to tackle the challenge in
greater human development interest.
Keywords: Out of School Children, Drop Out rate, Unskilled Labor, Public Policies
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Archives of Business Research (ABR) Vol. 10, Issue 10, October-2022
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
INTRODUCTION
The education is the delivery of knowledge, skills and information from teachers to students in
a formal and non-formal way referred to in the available literature on the subject. The term
literacy is also defined that “The ability of a person who can read a newspaper and write a
simple letter in any language”. (Brief on Censes 2017, n.d.)
The out of School children (OOSC) are defined as children of school-going age that are not going
to school. Another situation explained is that they enrolled in school but dropped out from the
schools mostly at the primary or middle school level. Children from 05 years to 16 years are
eligible to enroll in schools if they are not in school, they may be called out of school as per the
law of the country.
Pakistan is the oldest civilization in the Indus valley. Their policymakers have been trying to
improve literacy and reduce the dropout rate in public sector schools for a long time, but
improvements are very slow in the fields. The constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan,
1973 – Article 37-b focused on the improvements in literacy at large. “The State shall remove
illiteracy and provide free and compulsory secondary education within the minimum possible
period”. The 18th Amendment of the Constitutions Article 25-A of the Pakistani Constitution,
states that “The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of
five to sixteen years in such manner as may be determined by law” (The constitution of the
Islamic Republic State of Pakistan, n.d.)
The above-referred amendment in the law was incorporated in 2013, but not implemented
properly and at the gross roots level because of a lack of strategic planning and shorted funds.
Bad governance and several others obstacles are also privileged in the way of implementation
of the agenda of literacy with quality education for all.
The need of the hour is to address this human development challenge in greater human
development interest and in a comprehensive and in-depth way to examine the country’s case,
sort out major obstacles, and focus on feasible policy options. This is the aim and object of the
paper on out of school children of Pakistan. The paper will be feasible for donners, NGOs CBOs
students of education faculty general readers, and policymakers.
The Review of Literature
The policymakers accept their failure in the implementation of sustainable development goal
04 quality education for all to some extent. In this regard the economic survey of Pakistan
(2019-20) concludes that as per investment in the education sector progress is not quite
satisfactory “Similar to many developing countries, Pakistan has not made adequate progress
in improving education outcomes. Large investments in education access and quality are
required to obtain the objective of educated and skilled human resources, along with
comprehensive planning, removal of gender inequalities, and enforcing more accountability in
the sector. The education-related expenditure increased by 4.7 percent (to Rs868.0Billion) in
2018-19. The provincial governments are also spending a sizeable amount of their Annual
Development Plans (ADPs) on education. A minor decline of 2.1 percent has been observed in
Sindh province, as expenditure on education stood at Rs162.6 billion in 2018-19 as compared
to Rs166 Billion in 2017-18” (Ministry of Finance, n.d.)
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Shoro, I., Tagar, H. K., Rubab, R. K., & Naveed, M. (2022). Don't Drop Me Outside in 21st Century: A Cry from the Indus Valley Region. Archives of
Business Research, 10(10). 19-25.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/abr.1010.13211
The international organizations /donors are also taking serious and sincere efforts to over com
the challenge of quality education and out of school children in the region but their efforts are
not very fruitful in this field and the result is very slow and unsatisfactory. United Nations
Development Program’s (UNDP) annual report (2019), elaborates a dismal picture of quality
education and literacy in the country with reference to the UNDP report on Human
Development. “Pakistan is ranked 152 out of 189 countries in the United Nations Development
Program’s (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI) ranking. Unfortunately, Pakistan has not
exhibited improvement in key educational indicators, such as literacy rate, gross enrolment
ratio, and expenditure on education, as compared to regional countries. Pakistan's literacy rate
of 57 percent lags well behind its neighboring countries. The primary school dropout rate is
22.7 percent (3rdhighest in the region after Bangladesh and Nepal), which is alarming” (UNDP)
Annual Report 2019) This is also evident that in south Asian regional countries (SARC)
Countries status of literacy and quality Pakistan ranking is 07th lowest among 08th countries
just before Afghanistan as mentioned by the same report on educational development of the
country. According to a recent survey the COVID-19 pandemic has not only created a health
crisis in the country but also adversely affected other sectors including the education sector
quantity and quality. The government of the country is focusing to improve both the quality and
coverage of education through effective policy interventions and enhancing the allocation of
resources, but the required reforms in the education sector cannot be achieved without the
active participation of the private sector and rapidly increased public sector allocation.
(Finance, n.d.) Pakistan is Currently the sixth most populous country in the world with 220
million people, Pakistan's education system has evolved substantially from both its Islamic and
British historical roots. It has improved greatly in the 20th and 21st centuries but still tends to
rely too heavily on rote memorization and outdated teaching and old examination methods.
While great strides have been made in improving literacy and participation rates, the education
system remains largely elitist with access to the best educational opportunities available only
to the more affluent or well-connected. (Pbs.gov.pk, n.d.)
METHODOLOGY
The descriptive analysis strategy has been adopted to identify the challenges and policy flaws
and other socio-cultural issues which accelerate out of school’s children in the Indus valley
/Pakistan in the 21st century. Personal observations of the author as an education expert,
outcomes of specific and target groups, and primary and secondary data of some individuals
and organizations have been used to strengthen the hypothesis. Pieces of evidence from the
Economic Survey of Pakistan, Secondary data of UNICEF, ASER, and others nongovernmental
organizations are included and analyzed.
Key Research Questions
i. What is the Present Status of School Education of Pakistan in Comparisons of the Neighbors
County Particularly SARC?
ii. What are the major challenges that promote dropout?
iii. How we can retain the children in schools & improve within Public Policy Frame Work in
Post- Pandemic Era