Education Emergency in Pakistan: An Urgent Call to Action

With over 26 million children out of school, Pakistan faces an education emergency that violates the constitutional promise of Article 25-A. This flagship white paper examines the crisis through three interconnected themes. Gender-transformative education calls for dismantling the norms and structures that keep girls out of school. Equitable financing confronts chronically low, unevenly distributed education spending. Education resilience addresses a system repeatedly broken by disasters like the 2022 floods. Together, these lenses make the case for an emergency response equal to the scale of the challenge.

Key highlights/findings

Over 26 million children are out of school in Pakistan, the highest number in the world.

Gender inequality isn’t just an access problem. It runs through how teachers teach, what textbooks say, and how budgets are planned.

Education spending has historically stayed below 2% of GDP. Closing the gap requires political will, not just more donor pledges.

The 2022 floods exposed how fragile the system is and how slowly it recovers when schools go down.