75% Pak children unable to read single sentence in English: Report

Seventy-five percent of children in Pakistan are unable to read a sentence in English, a survey report launched by South Asia Forum for Education Development has found.

The report of the Forum, managed by Idara Taleem-o-Aagahi in collaboration with the Foundation Open Society Institute, Department for International Development, National Commission for Human Development and Oxfam, also revealed that as many as 58% children in the country cannot read a sentence in Urdu or in their regional languages, The Dawn reports. 

According to the report, the household survey that assessed learning outcomes of school-going (5-16 years) children in 85 districts (rural areas) across Pakistan found that majority of the children could not even read up to Class-II level text in Urdu, regional languages or English or do basic levels of arithmetic. Only 41.8% children, of those assessed, could read at least a sentence in Urdu or in their own regional languages while merely 25.8% of them were able to read sentences in English. 

Learning levels of the children in arithmetic were even worse as just 40.1% of them could do two-digit subtraction sums with carry while only 23.6% could do three-digit division sums.

The survey was conducted in 28 districts of Punjab, Balochistan; 15 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 14 in Sindh, 17 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, four in Gilgit-Baltistan, three in Fata and two in Islamabad capital territory.

The report revealed that 57.3% of 3-5 age group children were not enrolled for pre-schooling while 32.3% of five years age children were out of school, posing a great challenge for the provincial governments that are struggling to achieve universal primary education.