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Summary In 2007, 45 percent suffered from extreme education poverty in Balochistan.
In Pakistan, the data presented in our Report on Reaching the Marginalised heavily influenced the countrys 2011 Education Emergency Report.The report highlighted the gulf between the national average of educational attainment for the poorest in the country, and for those living in the province with the worst educational deprivation - Balochistan.In 2007, 45 per cent suffered from extreme education poverty in the province, compared with 25 per cent in the wealthier province, Punjab.Yet, vast gender gaps are evident for the poorest in both of these provinces, leaving poor, young women in Punjab with a similar chance of reaching two years of schooling to those in Balochistan: in both provinces, around 80 per cent are in extreme education poverty.Pakistan, 2007, 17-22 year olds with less than two years in schoolOur new website is a first step towards drawing attention to the vast disparities affecting millions of children’s chance for an education.However, there is still a need for more and better data to identify the groups that are most deprived of education in different societies.Goal-setting often leads to attention being paid to low-hanging fruit - those easiest to reach, making it possible to show progress most quickly.Unfortunately, in education, this approach has left 61 million children - many of them poor, girls and those living in remote rural locations - missing out on the push towards getting all children into school by 2015.It is welcome that one of the three areas being addressed by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, in his new global initiative launched on September 26, 2012, Education First is putting every child into school.And improving available data for measuring marginalisation in education must remain a high priority for the post-2015 agenda.
