Out-of-School Children: From Policy Failures to Human Realities
By: Mahjabeen Aslam
Out-of-school children are never merely statistics buried in government reports. They are children with tired hands, unfinished dreams, and burdens far heavier than their ages.
Whenever literacy campaigns were launched, we as teachers would walk through auto workshops, roadside hotels, shops, and crowded streets in search of children who belonged to classrooms rather than workplaces. We went door to door in areas such as Muslim Nagri and Isa Nagri, trying to convince parents that education is not merely about books; it is a path capable of rewriting destiny itself.
Within my school community, nearly thirty children who spent their mornings working for survival became connected to education through a second-shift school initiative. They possessed very little, yet they had finally found something precious: a place where they were allowed to learn.
There was a time when these children would peep through the school gate from outside, their eyes were filled with silent hope. Then came the day they entered carrying school bags and books, arriving with smiles that seemed brighter than the morning itself. They played, studied, laughed, and learned with a joy that only denied childhood can truly understand.
When the morning shift ended and the gates opened, some children walked home while others quietly entered for the evening shift — two different worlds crossing through the same doorway.
To increase enrollment, the government introduced a school meal program that provided lunch to the students. My school also became part of this initiative for students studying in
morning shift.
Yet some children from the evening shift would often say:
“The morning students eat all the food. Nothing is left for us.”
That sentence still pierces the heart.
Today, even that place of
learning spot has disappeared. What was taken away was not merely a classroom; it was a child’s fragile bridge to education.
A five-year program was expected to complete its mission in only three years but it collapsed before even reaching that point.
Funds disappeared. Teachers disappeared. And with them vanished the education of out-of-school children once again.
These children had enrolled in evening schools carrying hope for a better future, yet before reaching any meaningful stage of learning, they were pushed back out of education once more.
The gates closed.
Many projects for out-of-school children begin with ribbon-cuttings, banners, photographs, media campaigns, and speeches. But after the applause fades, the children themselves disappear from the conversation. No one counts how many returned to workshops, factories, farms, and street labour once the projects quietly die.
An educational emergency cannot remain a slogan painted onto conference banners. If education is truly an emergency, then where is the emergency response? Where is the required budget? Where are the survival systems for families trapped in the cycle of poverty?
The school meal program certainly increased enrollment. For some children, even a single plate of food became a reason to attend school. Yet one painful reality remained untouched:
Many children never reached school at all because they were responsible for feeding three or four family members. They returned home not with homework, but with bread earned through labour.
Every day, hunger stands face to face with education — and too often, hunger wins.
People do not merely need enrollment statistics. They need continuity, dignity, fulfillment, and the ability to survive.
Even among children who do get admission into schools, dropout rates rise sharply after primary education because poverty drags them back towards labour before education can pull them toward opportunity.
No nation can solve the crisis of out-of-school children through temporary projects alone. What is required is nothing less than educational surgery: long-term political commitment, sustained financial investment, social protection for vulnerable families, vocational pathways, second-shift schools, retention policies, and genuine respect for every child’s right to learn etc .
The real question is not how many campaigns were launched.
The real question is:
How many children remained in schooling?
How many completed their education?
And how many are still standing outside school gates, peeping inward with hope?
Out-of-school children are not disconnected from education because they lack intelligence or potential. They are pushed away because survival becomes more urgent than schooling.
As children grow little stronger after primary education, poverty pulls them towards labour. Some begin repairing engines in workshops. Others wash dishes in roadside restaurants. In rural areas, many children work in fields alongside their parents, harvesting crops, carrying heavy loads, and stepping into heavy responsibilities long before childhood has even ended.
Yet our education system often behaves as though every child lives the same life and enjoys the same opportunities.
Even in agricultural communities, schools continue imposing rigid schedules, strict attendance policies, and inflexible examination systems without understanding the realities of poor families. During harvesting seasons and crop-cutting periods , precisely when children are most needed in the fields , schools continue conducting examinations .
As a result, these children fail. Not because they are incapable, but because life forces them to choose between bread and books.
After repeated failure, they quietly disappear from school.
No farewell.
No inquiry.
No one knocks on the door to ask where the child went.
This is precisely why in some areas educational programs cannot succeed through uniform models imposed upon vastly different realities. Education for vulnerable children must contain flexibility, compassion, and an understanding of local circumstances.
There must be systems through which children can continue learning alongside seasonal responsibilities without permanently losing their futures.
A child helping parents in the fields is not an educational failure. The failure belongs to the system that could not accommodate the child’s reality.
Education systems should work for learners — not force learners to get smashed beneath the weight of rigid systems.
Perhaps one of the most transformative reforms could begin within schools themselves.
Students enrolled in SSC and matriculation programs should be encouraged or even formally required to teach and mentor out-of-school children as part of social responsibility and national service. If every secondary school student taught even one child a single lesson, communities themselves could begin transforming from within.
Education should not remain confined to examination halls and certificates alone. It should cultivate empathy, responsibility, leadership, and service to humanity.
When students participate in teaching out-of-school children, they do not merely teach lessons; they also learn gratitude, social awareness, and the painful realities of inequality.
Perhaps then privileged children would understand why another child once stood peeping through the school gate.
Perhaps then they would understand why some children could never remain in school for long.
And perhaps then education would cease to be merely a system of buildings and credentials and instead become a moral mission ensuring that no child remains standing outside the door of learning.
Sometimes the distance between a school-going child and an out-of-school child is only a gate — yet emotionally, it can feel like the distance between two separate worlds.
The child sitting inside the classroom may glance briefly toward the gate before returning to books, laughter, uniforms, lunch boxes, friendships, and dreams written across their diaries. But the child standing outside looks inward with entirely different eyes — eyes carrying silence, longing, and unanswered questions.
They watche children receiving lessons they may never receive themselves.
For one child, the school bell is an ordinary sound woven into daily routine. For the other, it is the echo of a life slipping slowly out of reach.
Writing these words leaves the heart unbearably heavy for some truths are felt more deeply than they can ever be expressed.”.
Both children possess the same capacity to dream. Both equally deserve education. Yet poverty decides which child sits at the desk and chair and who remains standing outside the gate.
We speak passionately about global agendas, SDGs, and MDGs, yet too often we continue walking along development pathways designed elsewhere while ignoring the realities rooted within our own soil.
Pakistan carries its own unique struggles.
Pakistan has its own culture, rural patterns, economic pressures, population burdens, and deprivations.
A child harvesting crops in a village, a boy repairing engines in a workshop, or a girl standing outside a school gate in an overcrowded settlement cannot always be understood through imported frameworks alone.
Perhaps the time has come not merely to adopt global development agendas, but to define our own vision as well — Pakistan Development Goals (PDGs): goals shaped by the heartbeat of our own people and the realities of our own children.
Goals that understand seasonal labour, poverty-driven dropouts, overcrowded classrooms, underfunded schools, inequality, and the silent dreams carried by out-of-school children.
Nations rise when they stop merely translating the ideas of others .
Nations need to own their problems, create solutions from their own intellect, experiences, and ground realities.
Pakistan does not lack talent, resilience, or compassion.
What it requires is the courage to shape development according to its own realities while placing humanity, dignity, equity, and inclusion at the centre.
Only then will development cease to exist merely in conference halls and policy documents and begin to appear in the lives of ordinary people.
