KP education affairs.

AROUND 39 per cent of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's 11.7 million children in the age bracket of 5-16 years are out of school, including one million who live in the erstwhile Fata region, according to a survey conducted by the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP). The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Elementary and Secondary Education (E and SE) Department will need to establish over 15,000 additional schools for the enrolment of the out-of-school children totalling 4.7 million in the province.

The education officials claim that there are about 35,000 government schools in the province where 5.5 million children are getting education. However, there appears to be no plan to build new schools for the large out-of-school population.

If the education officials are to be believed, the government every year approves 300 new schools in the annual budget.

However, at this rate, it would take 50 years to build enough schools to reach the millions of out-of-school children, and the increase in population would have far exceeded the current demand for schools by then.

Moreover, considering that a six-room building for a primary school costs Rs30 million on the land acquired free of cost, and it takes two to four years to be completed, the annual budget of Rs205 billion for the E and SE Department is...