Access to Quality Education in Pakistan
Access to Quality Education in Pakistan by Muddaser Saeed* Pakistan's education system comprises a total of 260,903 institutions, catering to 41,018,384 students and supported by 1,535,461 teachers. Within this system, there are 180,846 public institutions and 80,057 private institutions. Consequently, the private sector operates 31% of educational institutes, while the remaining 69% are public institutes. On top of that, a significant number of youth do not go to school since they have to work from an early age or go to religious madrassah schools that run on a charity basis and often lack quality education in math, science, and other subjects for economic mobility. The rise of dominant elite private school chains can be traced back to the late 1970s. These schools arose as a response to what they perceived as a decline in the quality of education in public schools administered by the government, particularly after Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's nationalization policy i