A data story
How a child becomes learning-poor
Enrollment has genuinely improved. What happens after a child walks through the school gate is the real story behind Pakistan's 80% learning poverty rate.
Stage 1 of 5
Getting to school
Out-of-school children fell to 28% in 2025, down sharply from 38% in 2023 — real, recent progress, strongest in Balochistan (69%→45%). Getting children in the door is no longer the whole problem.
Stage 2 of 5
Whether the teacher shows up
Older surveys found roughly one in five teachers absent on any given day; newer biometric-monitoring pilots report attendance near 87-94% in the districts that have rolled it out — real improvement where measured, but no single current national figure exists.
Stage 3 of 5
How many children per teacher
Against a global average near 26:1, a single trained teacher in Pakistan's public schools is often responsible for well over double the students — even a fully present, capable teacher cannot give each child individual attention at this ratio.
Stage 4 of 5
Schools that exist on paper
Sindh alone has had 7,000–11,000 schools cited as 'ghost schools' — teachers drawing salaries with no functioning classroom behind them — in various reports. The wide variance across sources is itself a sign of how weak the underlying accountability data is.
Stage 5 of 5
What a child actually learns
This is the punchline: half of Pakistan's Grade 5 students cannot read a Grade-2-level story, and 54% cannot do Grade-2-level arithmetic — down from 55% and better in the prior cycle, but still the clearest evidence that enrollment gains haven't yet translated into learning.
Enrollment to literacy