Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Cabinet approved a sum of Rs. 998.500 Million for the launching of the Insaf Taleem Card in the province during the financial year 2022-23 to benefit the students who are enrolled in the government colleges and facing hardships in paying their annual/semester admission fee. According to the details, over 244858 students are studying in 274 colleges across the province and a significant chunk of them would benefit from the scheme.
Literacy is the most important element in human development whereas education had been essential for living a dignified and honorable life since the prehistoric period. Besides its importance from the religious point of view, education is of utmost importance in the modern-day world for the masses without an exception of age, sex or race. Unfortunately, Pakistan has a very low literacy rate in the South Asia region. The reports suggest that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has a higher male literacy rate but the region legs behind in girls’ education due to cultural and social traditions.
The KP education sector has some inherited issues which put a negative impact on education activities as well as marred the literacy rate. The problems include the failure of successive governments in the construction of hundreds of earthquake-hit schools in the province, recurrent floods, decades-long terrorism-driven insurgency in tribal areas, poverty, and inaccessibility to far-flung hilly regions. This situation merits additional investment and concerted efforts by the provincial government to overcome these challenges effectively.
Meanwhile, poverty and ignorance are other reasons for the low literacy rate in the province. Most parents send their wards to work instead of school because they can’t afford the educational expenses. Some parents consider education a waste of time and resources and prefer to employ their kids in skilled work, and business instead of schooling. In fact, educational development is a progressive process, which needs leaders’ support and consistency in the policies, so their benefits could be fully grasped by all factions of society.
