EDUCATION
Education is the major concern in Pakistan and likewise in other developing countries, as it’s a hope and a path for the future development. The world is united for this concern reflecting which, habitat has developed SDGs 41,which claims to achieve the universal quality education at the primary and secondary level to all boys and girls by 2030 (UN,2015).
The article 25-A of the Constitution of Pakistan 2 guarantees the right to education for all children aged 5–16 years. This right is reinforced by laws, policies, and programmers at both federal and provincial levels. Contradicting to the constitution, according to the UNESCO Institute of statistics, there are over 6.5 million children (of school going age) are currently not in primary school and another 2.7 million are not in lower secondary school. These children, as well as those who are at risk of dropping out, are being denied the right to a full basic education of good quality.
Pakistan ranks at the 125th spot out of 130 in educational ranking (WEF, 2017). The Literacy rate of Pakistan remains stagnant at 50 percent from the previous two years. The literacy of male 70 percent and female 48 percent reflecting gender disparity in education as well (Census, 2017). There are multiple reasons due to which quality of education is declining in Pakistan and ranking in education remains low. Some of the major problems are un-availability or lack of qualified teachers, improper mechanism for monitoring and evaluation, high dropout rate, out of school children, poor condition of infrastructure, unaffordability that contributes to child labor, low public expenditure in the education sector that is only 2.2 percent in 2017 and outdated curriculum are some problems among other issues.
Surjani Town Sports & Welfare Association aims to increase the access to education of adolescents, especially for girls. Surjani Town Sports & Welfare Association is providing the quality education to the dropped-out adolescents from schools.
Surjani sports town and welfare association initiated a project named “Parh Aagay Barh” in which they taught students some basic subjects like English, urdu, maths, islamiat. etc. The duration of the project was 4 months and it was free of cost. Also, Surjani sports town & welfare association gave stationery, bags and a healthy lunch to the students. After getting basic education most of students mainstreamed in private & government schools on primary and secondary level. Majority parents requested them to look after their child’s further education as they helped and supported them for better one.