Islamabad, Feb 8 (NationPress) Recent statistics reveal that Pakistan has been positioned last in South Asia for literacy rates, highlighting its education crisis as a crucial economic weakness, as reported by local media.

According to a report from the Free and Fair Election Network, Pakistan's literacy rate has reached 63%, which is a shocking 15 percentage points below the regional average of 78%. In today’s competitive global market, no country can prosper with an uneducated workforce. This situation transcends mere educational failure; it represents a profound economic vulnerability, as emphasized by an editorial in the Express Tribune.

The report further indicates that even if Pakistan were to eliminate terrorism today, establishing advanced industries would remain infeasible, given that every third citizen is illiterate.

The editorial elaborates, “We have experienced authoritarian rule, enlightened moderation, controlled democracy, crony capitalism, and Islamic socialism, all of which pledged success but ultimately fell short. Despite the unique reasons for each failure, they all lacked a focus on educating the future workforce.”

Furthermore, recent findings reveal that approximately 28% of school-aged children in Pakistan—around 20 million—are still out of school, showcasing structural failures that cannot be addressed through political rhetoric.

As per an editorial in Business Recorder, “The latest results from the Household Integrated Economic Survey (HIES) provide a stark reality check on Pakistan’s educational and human development progress. Despite numerous declarations of an 'education emergency,' 28% of school-aged children—around 20 million—remain out of school.”

While this statistic marks a decrease from 25.3 million in 2019, the progress over the past six years has been excruciatingly slow and uneven, revealing systemic failures that political promises cannot remedy.

The survey also underscores the persistence of inequality. Rural girls, especially in Sindh and Balochistan, continue to face significant barriers to education. In Pakistan, one in four boys is out of school, and nearly one in three girls faces the same fate.

This gender disparity highlights entrenched social norms, pervasive poverty, and inadequate public education resources. Economic pressures compel many boys to start working at a young age, while girls often cannot attend school due to family constraints, perceived irrelevance of education, or financial hurdles, as noted in the editorial. The fact that 20% of children have never enrolled in school indicates a failure at the very outset of the educational system.