The emergency that never ends

EDITORIAL: More than two years after declaring a National Education Emergency, Pakistan still has 25-26 million children of school-going age outside the classroom, according to the Civil Services Academy’s latest review.

There is no shortage of diagnoses, policy frameworks or official declarations explaining how the country reached this point.

The real scandal is that successive governments have spent decades acknowledging the crisis while allowing it to deepen until it became one of the greatest threats to Pakistan’s future. This is no longer simply an education problem. It is a national development crisis.

Pakistan is today the fifth most populous country in the world. For years, policymakers have spoken of converting this large and youthful population into a demographic dividend capable of driving economic growth. That aspiration rests on one fundamental condition: young people must receive an education that equips them with the knowledge and skills needed to participate productively in the economy. Leaving more than 25 million children outside the education system transforms what could have been an economic advantage into a demographic liability.

The Civil Services Academy’s comprehensive review correctly concludes that Pakistan’s crisis is no longer one of policy formulation but of execution. That observation should surprise no one. Education has featured prominently in national plans, constitutional guarantees and repeated policy commitments for decades. Article 25-A promises free and compulsory education. National action plans have been drafted. Education emergencies have been declared. Yet every few years another report arrives documenting the same failures, only with larger numbers and greater urgency.

The provincial breakdown illustrates how deeply the problem has become embedded. Punjab alone accounts for between 9.6 million and 10.4 million out-of-school children. Sindh has approximately 7.4 million, nearly 4.1 million of them girls. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa struggles with security challenges, geography and shortages of female teachers, while Balochistan continues to suffer from vast infrastructural deficits, non-functional schools and extraordinary barriers to access. Different provinces face different obstacles, but they all arrive at the same destination: millions of children denied the education guaranteed to them under the Constitution.

The report also exposes another uncomfortable reality. Pakistan’s education crisis persists despite the country understanding exactly what needs to be done. Better governance, stronger accountability, improved data integration, greater investment, more classrooms, additional teachers and decentralised administration have all been recommended repeatedly. The country does not suffer from a shortage of ideas. It suffers from a shortage of political will.

That failure carries consequences extending far beyond literacy statistics. Children excluded from school today are far more likely to remain trapped in poverty, enter low-skilled informal employment, suffer poorer health outcomes and face diminished economic opportunities throughout their lives. At the national level, weak educational attainment translates directly into lower productivity, reduced competitiveness and slower long-term economic growth. No country aspiring to sustained development can afford to leave such a large share of its future workforce outside the classroom.

The financial argument is equally compelling. Pakistan continues to allocate a relatively small share of national income to education, while much of that spending is absorbed by salaries and administrative costs rather than improving educational outcomes. Every year of delay increases the cost of reversing the crisis as population growth continues to outpace educational capacity.

There is another irony that deserves attention. Political leaders frequently describe Pakistan’s young population as one of the country’s greatest strengths. A strength that remains uneducated cannot remain a strength indefinitely. Demographic dividends are not created by population alone. They are created by investing in that population through education, healthcare and skills development. Without those investments, demographic expansion eventually places greater pressure on employment, public services, social stability and economic resources.

The CSA report should therefore be treated as more than another policy review destined for official archives. It is a warning that Pakistan is approaching a point where decades of neglect may become increasingly difficult to reverse. Every child who remains outside school today represents a lost opportunity tomorrow, both for the individual and for the country.

Pakistan has declared enough education emergencies. The emergency now lies in implementation. Until governments begin treating universal education as a national priority equal to every other strategic objective, the country’s greatest resource will continue slipping through its fingers, one child at a time.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026