Perspective - Page 5

Insights From the 2023 Census Report

The 2023 Census conducted by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics released its complete report in July 2024 indicates that the total population of Pakistan is 240 million out of which the population of children under 18 is 112 Million (47% of the total population). Children Population (under 18) Population under 18 Total Male Female Transgender Pakistan 112,472,700 58,099,978 54,370,121 2,601…

Permitted age for employment of children as domestic workers

Do you know what the minimum age is for children in the different provinces of Pakistan to be employed as domestic workers? Child labour is a provincial subject in Pakistan after the 18th Constitutional Amendment in 2010. The 18th Constitutional Amendment devolved the issue of labour and employment to the…

Juvenile Offenders in Punjab

The total number of convicted and undertrial juveniles imprisoned in various borstal…

Transport For Schooling

A JUDGE at the Lahore High Court recently ordered that schools should arrange for…

Why Students Cheat

On social media, a wave of videos recently exposed students using advanced gadgets to cheat in examinations. While the focus has been on policing misconduct, a deeper issue remains unexamined: students are not disengaging from education because of a lack of discipline, but because they increasingly question its value. For…

In Unsafe Hands

AN HIV outbreak among children should have been a turning point for Taunsa’s main public hospital. Instead, an investigation by the BBC suggests that little has changed. Undercover footage from the Tehsil Headquarters Hospital, filmed about eight months after the government’s crackdown in March 2025, shows syringes being reused, injections administered through clothing, and unqualified…

Ending Child Marriages

THE Punjab Assembly’s committee approval of the Child Marriage Restraint Bill, 2026, is a welcome and necessary step. By setting 18 as the minimum legal age for marriage for both genders, the province moves to correct a long-standing imbalance and protect children from a practice that has scarred generations. The…

Polio Security

Yesterday, the government initiated a nationwide polio vaccination campaign, aiming to reach over 45 million children under the age of five. Such drives are meant to signal resolve, yet this one has begun under the shadow of violence, with the martyrdom of a police officer in Hangu, K-P, exposing once…

Violating Right to Free Education

Poverty, food insecurity, gender inequality, and funding – all of these reasons have been used by the government on various occasions to explain why there are 26.2 million children aged 5-16 out of school. A country that has the world’s second-highest number of out-of-school children is apparently so steeped in…

Between Play and Pixels: Children Growing up in Modern Times

A digital transformation has been introduced to the quiet, bustling homes everywhere, replacing the sounds of children playing on the streets. If you visit a typical household today, it is likely to observe a child bent over a phone with headphones in, completely lost in a digital world. At times,…

Chaotic Exams

Every year, as examinations begin under the Board of Secondary Education Karachi, the same pattern of disruption and disorder resurfaces, exposing an examination system that appears incapable of learning from its own repetition. What should be a routine, well-oiled operation instead descends into confusion, placing an unfair burden on students…

Educating the Poor

JAVED is enrolled in Grade 6 in a government school in his village. Akhtar, Javed’s father, is wondering whether or not he should pull Javed out of school. Akhtar feels Javed is not learning much at school, and that if he is put to work at the nearby auto-repair workshop…

New Teaching Practices

The education sector in Pakistan is notable for its overreliance on archaic methods of teaching, especially the technique of rote memorisation which has produced countless mnemonists but not many thinkers. Students are encouraged to fill in pages upon pages of information without meaningful assessments to back up their comprehension, and…

Education Last

THERE is one question that has been bothering me these days: what message are we sending to our children when their education is the first thing we suspend in times of crisis? We are a country with 26.2 million children out of school, according to data collected in 2021–22 by…