Pakistan

Pakistan is a disaster prone country that has been affected by either human and/or natural disasters such as conflict in KP-FATA, earthquake in 2005, cyclone in 2007 and flooding in 2010, 2011, and 2012. These crisis have impacted millions of Pakistan people including children, adolescents, women and other vulnerable group. Education is one of the most vulnerable sector in term of emergency negative effects such as damages to schools, schools used as shelter by IDPs, trauma experienced by children, adolescents and adults, disruption of school academic year and losing learning materials.

To effectively respond to these disasters, particularly during earthquake and flooding, the Education cluster was activated in 2005  and since then members have provided life-saving and protective education in emergency activities to support the Government of Pakistan to resume learning activities in timely manner.

COVID-19 global pandemic has had a severe impact on the education of 42 million learners’ girls and boys. School closures were announced in March and November 2020. Nowadays there is a greater risk of dropout and a huge challenge of retention of children in schools, especially from the most marginalized and vulnerable groups, including girls. There is also a mounting challenge of how to bring back children to schools and maintain retention. In addition, rains and floods heavily disrupted education activities in Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan, damaging or destroying schools, while others were used as shelters.

The Education Sector working group  in Pakistan is working  to address needs of children affected by COVID-19 and natural emergencies. Approximately 2.2 million People in Need (PiN)  are estimated of which  Education Sector  targeted 1.1 million children in  2021.

• Strengthen education sector coordination at national and provincial levels to facilitate government and non-government stakeholders for better planning, implementation and monitoring of education interventions.
• Improve access and quality of education for most vulnerable children, including girls and marginalized people affected by floods and COVID-19 through quality formal and non-formal education provision.