Since 2013, the PTI government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has declared a bold commitment to overhauling the province’s education system. Budgets were elevated sharply, new schools declared open and teachers hired en masse.
But a detailed analysis of figures spanning 12 years exposes a narrative of stagnation, inequality and missed opportunity. By almost every metric, KP failed to match national expectations, let alone match the progress seen in Punjab or the modest gains in Sindh.
Education spending climbed dramatically over the period. In the financial year 2013–14, the provincial budget for education stood at approximately Rs84 billion. By 2024–25, this figure had surpassed Rs360 billion – an increase of nearly 330 per cent. Alarmingly, despite the large allocations, a significant portion – estimated at nearly 20 per cent of the development budget in 2022-23 – remained unspent, blocked by bureaucratic delays or trapped in cost centres that never saw distribution.
Nowhere is this gap between promise and delivery clearer than in student enrolment. Between 2014 and 2025, the total number of students in the province rose from approximately 4.17 million to 4.38 million – a modest increase that barely kept pace with population growth. Meanwhile, census data from 2023 revealed that nearly 4.92 million children, aged between five and sixteen, were not enrolled in school – about 37 per cent of the school-age population. Disturbingly, two-thirds of those out of school were girls, a figure that points to persistent gender inequity. In comparison, Punjab recorded around 9.6 million out-of-school children, equivalent to 27 per cent of its school-age cohort, while Sindh registered about 7.8 million, or 46 per cent.
Gross enrolment rates appeared reasonable on paper – hovering at 85–90 per cent in most years – but net enrolment rates, which exclude over-age and under-age children, painted a bleaker picture. In 2019–20, net primary enrolment had dropped from about 71 per cent in 2013 to roughly 65 per cent. The gap widened further at the secondary level, particularly for girls. Female net enrolment in primary grades averaged 56 per cent, but at the secondary level, it plunged to a mere 28 per cent. By contrast, Punjab achieved nearly 47 per cent female secondary enrolment, a milestone that far exceeds KP.
The province’s literacy statistics reveal further disappointment. Adult literacy hovered around 52 per cent in 2013 and had barely changed by 2023 – sitting at approximately 51 per cent. Meanwhile, Punjab’s literacy rate rose steadily from 62 to 66 per cent in the same period, while Sindh improved modestly from 54 to 57.5 per cent. Youth literacy (ages 15–24) in KP remained limited to around 55 per cent, whereas in Punjab it soared above 70 per cent.
Gender disparities were especially stark. Female literacy in KP was recorded at just 37 per cent, compared with 61 per cent in Punjab and 50 per cent in Sindh. In 29 of the 35 districts (83 per cent), over 50 per cent of the female population is illiterate. In disadvantaged districts such as Lower Kohistan and Kolai–Palas, fewer than one-third of women can read or write.
Reports from tribal regions indicated that just one in eight girls completed primary education, and fewer than six per cent progressed to secondary school. The shortage of female teachers – only around 40 per cent of the teaching force – combined with cultural norms and safety concerns, continues to exclude girls from classrooms as soon as they reach puberty.
Learning outcomes present perhaps the most damning evidence. A 2023 survey showed that just 44 per cent of Grade 5 students in government schools could read basic Urdu passages, only 43 per cent could decipher simple English sentences and merely 35 per cent could solve two-digit division problems. This reflected a decline from 2021, signalling that improvements in physical infrastructure did not translate into enhanced learning. More formal achievement testing placed Grade 4 pupils at an average of 38 per cent in maths, 44 per cent in English and 55 per cent in Urdu; Grade 8 students averaged only 35 per cent in maths and 43 per cent in science. There has been no significant upward shift over the twelve years.
The teacher workforce expanded rapidly – more than doubling from roughly 78,000 in 2012–13 to 143,000 by 2025. Attendance rates showed improvement, rising from 81 to over 90 per cent. Yet, despite numerical growth, the wholesale neglect of teacher training undermined any chance of improving quality. Almost 40 per cent of teachers lacked formal pedagogical training. Funded mentoring programmes never materialised, and induction courses were cancelled or delivered at inaccessible district centres. In some remote schools, a single teacher is responsible for delivering lessons across five grades simultaneously, often to classes of fifty students – a clear indicator of structural failure despite recruitment targets being met.
Infrastructure trends exhibited similar inconsistency. Ambitious programmes reportedly installed tens of thousands of missing facilities – classrooms, latrines, water pumps and solar systems – in over 24,000 schools during the early years of the PTI’s rule. However, more recent surveys highlighted that one-third of schools in former tribal districts still lacked a single toilet, two-thirds had no safe drinking water, and over half lacked reliable electricity.
In terms of disaster response, the province performed even worse. The monsoon floods of 2022 destroyed nearly 1,900 schools, but only around 20 per cent had been restored by mid-2025 – while Punjab managed to rebuild 70 per cent of its schools within two years of its 2019 monsoon crisis.
KP’s education outcomes fell behind those of both Punjab and Sindh in every major category. Sindh, despite its political shortcomings, saw gradual improvements in enrolment and literacy, even if it still lags behind Punjab. But Punjab achieved a clear success story, raising adult literacy to 66 per cent, ensuring that nearly three-quarters of children were enrolled in primary school, and producing competent Grade 5 learners at a rate twice that of KP.
Between 2013 and 2025, KP received increased funding, deployed sizeable infrastructure programmes and hired tens of thousands of teachers. Yet enrolment stagnated, girls were left out, literacy remained static and learning outcomes, if anything, declined. This performance gap cannot solely be linked to difficult terrain, poverty or historic conflict. Comparable provinces faced similar challenges yet achieved significantly better results. The evidence points to policy inconsistency, governance failings and execution deficits.
This stark record cannot be interpreted as anything other than a deep structural failure. Twelve years of reform efforts have yielded classrooms without learners, budgets without outcomes and words without results. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa entered a bold era of educational promise – and exited with a trail of unfulfilled ambitions.
The writer is former head of Citigroup’s emerging markets investments and author of ‘The Gathering Storm’.