By Zubeida Mustafa

ACCORDING to the Annual Status of Education Report 2012, only 37 per cent of three-to-five-year-old children are enrolled in pre-schools in rural Pakistan. The enrolment is slightly higher in the urban areas (55 per cent).

This is a serious problem that has profound implications for the goal of ‘education for all’.

Having neglected the education sector for decades, the state is now faced with a huge backlog of out-of-school children the majority of whom have parents with no or little schooling themselves. This, plus poverty, has aggravated the crisis in education for which innovative solutions are now needed. Continue reading Lighting the torch →