Female Education and Adult Literacy in Pakistan: Bridging the Connections

FEMALE EDUCATION AND ADULT LITERACY-BRIDGING THE CONNECTIONS

Pakistan has been struggling in the field of education since its creation. Low literacy rate and poor quality of education are the major drawbacks of the educational system in Pakistan (Farah, 2007; Latif, 2009). Especially, girls schooling has received very less preference in disadvantaged sections of the society and particularly in rural areas. In Sindh, girls mostly have very low access to the basic education as compared to boys. Even if some of girls get access to primary education, many factors hinder their further education and force them to quit schooling. In rural areas, the female literacy rate falls to 25 percent and girls’ school enrolment falls from fifty-five percent to twenty percent from Grade 1 to 6 (Latif, 2009; Das, 2010). There are two major factors impeding girls’ education in rural Sindh — demand and supply. At the demand side, parents and the community have the traditional and indifferent attitude towards female education, they consider it worthless. As far as supply side is concerned, unavailability of girls’ schools, poor location of schools, lack of facilities and infrastructure (Lloyd & Sathar, 2005), the shortage of competent and dedicated teachers are the big issues hindering female schooling in rural areas. The government has started taking initiatives to combat all these problems through its formal schooling system, literacy campaigns and Adult Literacy Programs (ALPs) to achieve Education for All (EFA) and Millennium Development Goals (National Education Policy, Pakistan, 1998-2010). The adult literacy centres (ALC) are established in all districts of Pakistan to provide basic literacy to each adult citizen of Pakistan. The assumption is that having achieved a certain level of literacy may also have helped those participants realize the need and value of educating girls. The study reported here aimed to explore the ALP participants’ views about female education.

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