1 https://propakistani.

pk/2019/06/10/latest-economic-survey-shows-a-higher-literacy-rate-and-
educational-expenditure/

Amin Yusufzai 2019

Literacy Rate

Literacy rate stood at 62.3 percent in 2017-18 (as compared to 60.7 percent in 2014-15), with
male literacy increasing from 71.6% to 72.5% and female literacy rate going from 49.6% to
51.8%. Area wise analysis suggests that literacy rate increased in both rural (51.9% to 53.3%)
and urban areas (76.0% to 76.6%).

It is also observed that male-female disparity is decreasing with time. The literacy rate increased in most
provinces with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa going from 54.1% to 55.3%, Punjab 61.9% to 64.7% and Balochistan
54.3% to 55.5%. Sindh was the only province which registered a marginal decline (63.0% to 62.2%).

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/PAK/pakistan/literacy-rate

https://www.statista.com/statistics/572781/literacy-rate-in-pakistan/

Literacy rate in Pakistan 2017

Published by H. Plecher, Feb 13, 2020

The literacy rate measures the percentage of people aged 15 and above who are able to read and write.
In 2017, Pakistan's total literacy rate was around 59 percent, with less than 47 percent of women being
literate and more than 71 percent of men.

Women in Pakistan need education

In Pakistan, women’s education is in dire need of improvement, and so far, the number of illiterate
women has not decreased - on the contrary, it has been going up for years. Although education for both
genders is not prohibited in Pakistan, women are generally not as well educated as men. But it doesn’t
stop there: Pakistan is one of the countries deemed worst for women in general when it comes to
quality of life and safety.

Economy and education

Pakistan is a predominantly Muslim country with a low urbanization rate, meaning the majority of its
population live in rural areas, where education is traditionally harder to come by than in cities. Pakistan
is still a developing country, and typically, most of the inhabitants work in the primary sector, since
Pakistan is rich in arable land. However, the tertiary sector generates the lion’s share of GDP. If the
country wants to make the leap to being a developed nation, education and equality need to be higher
on the list.

Pdf ref

https://en.unesco.org/gem-report/sites/gem-
report/files/EDUCATION_IN_PAKISTAN__A_FACT_SHEET.pdf

2 https://wenr.wes.org/2020/02/education-in-pakistan

Education in Pakistan
February 25, 2020

Robert Hunter, World Education Services

INTRODUCTION

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a culturally and linguistically diverse large South Asian
country bordered by Afghanistan and Iran to the north and west, China to the northeast, India to
the east and the Arabian Sea to the south. The Muslim-majority country was established in its
current form after the partition of former British India into India and Pakistan in 1947, and the
subsequent secession of Bangladesh, formerly known as East Pakistan, in 1971.

Currently the sixth most populous country in the world with 212 million people, Pakistan is
characterized by one of the highest population growth rates worldwide outside of Africa. Even
though the roughly 2 percent rate is now slowing, the country’s population is estimated to reach
403 million by 2050 (UN median range projection). There are more young people in Pakistan
today than at any point in its history, and it has one of the world’s largest youth populations with
64 percent of Pakistanis now under the age of 30. Consider that Karachi is projected to become
the third-largest city in the world with close to 32 million people by the middle of the century.
If Pakistan manages to educate and skill this surging youth population, it could harness a
tremendous youth dividend that could help to fuel the country’s economic growth and
modernization. Failure to integrate the country’s legions of youngsters into the education system
and the labor market, on the other hand, could turn population growth into what the Washington
Post called a “disaster in the making”: “Putting catastrophic pressures on water and sanitation
systems, swamping health and education services, and leaving tens of millions of people
jobless”—trends that would almost inevitably lead to the further destabilization of Pakistan’s
already fragile political system.

Given the poor state of Pakistan’s education system and its already rising youth unemployment
rate, such fears are anything but unfounded. According to the Global Youth Development Index
published by the Commonwealth, a measure which uses the domains of civic participation,
education, employment and opportunity, health and well-being, and political participation to
gauge the progress of young people, Pakistan ranked only 154th of 183 countries, trailing sub-
Saharan African nations like Sierra Leone or Ethiopia.

Perhaps most strikingly, Pakistan has the highest number of out-of-school children worldwide
after Nigeria: Approximately 22.7 million Pakistani children age five to 16—44 percent of this
age group—did not participate in education in 2017. As shown in the table below, attrition rates
increase substantially as children progress up the educational ladder.