According to UNESCO, about 258 million children are out of school worldwide. Pakistan has the world’s second-highest number of out-of-school children (OOSC) with an estimated 22.8 million children aged 5-16 not attending school. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the number of out-of-school children is an alarming 4.7 million. It requires establishing 15,000 more schools to accommodate this huge number of out
-of-school children. It is beyond the financial resources of public sector to construct 15,000 more schools. Baacha Khan Trust Educational Foundation (BKTEF) is well aware of the issue and is playing its role in providing free and subsidized schooling to children of the remote and marginalized areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan. We draw inspiration from the work of the renowned reformer and leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, popularly known as Baacha Khan, who established more than 100 community-based schools in the late 1920s. Baacha Khan Trust Educational Foundation is currently running 14 schools across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan. In future, we plan to extend to the remaining two provinces, Punjab and Sindh as well. We are also working on developing strategies on how to open more schools in the underdeveloped areas across Pakistan.
