Kohistan — where barriers continue to shatter girls’ education dreams

Samina*, a 16-year-old girl from Jan Bela in Lower Kohistan’s Dubair Valley, was married off in May. While the wedding served to appease her family and society at large, it shattered the child’s dream of pursuing secondary education.

“Samina was different,” says Alia*, the girl’s former school teacher, explaining that she found her student to be a curious girl interested in reading, studying, and using her laptop.

The young girl’s education came to a sudden halt after she graduated from the fifth grade at a government school last year.

Kohistan is divided into three districts — Upper Kohistan, Lower Kohistan, and Kolai Palas.

According to District Education Performance Index (Depix) Report 2023, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa “exhibits the greatest intra-provincial differences, with districts like Haripur, Chitral, and Abbottabad among the top performers, while Kolai Palas and Upper Kohistan ranking among the lowest.

Dismal state of education

Education activists and officials spoke to Dawn.com and highlighted the main reasons behind the dismal state of literacy among girls in Kohistan.

Alia recalled that when she attended Samina’s wedding, who was adorned in a bridal dress for her early marriage to a man from Swat, she looked unhappy.

The teacher recalled that once, while she was in the school staff room, Samina, engaged in a conversation with her, telling her that she wanted to be a “baji” (teacher) just like her.

These days, the now-married Samina has gone back to her parents’ home to spend a year there, the teacher told Dawn.com.

In Kohistan, it is a tradition that after the wedding ceremony, the girl returns to her parents’ home for a year, during which she does not meet with or even catch a glimpse of her husband. Once the period concludes, the girl goes back to her husband’s residence to begin her married life.

Alia also spoke about another bright student of hers — Rabia*, an eight-year-old disabled girl. Rabia used to be a study enthusiast and a keen learner, however, she also had to leave her school after passing the second grade.

The teacher proudly recalled the girl’s plans to receive the highest level of education despite her disability. She, however, added that Rabia wasn’t aware of the social and cultural barriers she would face ahead.

Alia, as a teacher, felt a strong responsibility to advocate for Rabia’s right to education. When asked about her efforts, she shared that during several visits to the child’s home, she tried to persuade Rabia’s mother to allow her daughter to continue her studies. Unfortunately, each attempt ended in disappointment.

Data related to females obtained from the education department revealed the alarming state of education in the three Kohistan districts.

The data shows less than 10 government middle schools each in Lower and Upper Kohistan districts, and Kolai-Palas. While Upper Kohistan and Kolai-Palas have one government high school each, Lower Kohistan has none.

A detailed breakdown of Lower Kohistan education statistics showed less number of students in the eighth grade than in the seventh in all seven girls’ middle schools in the district.

The overall pupil strength was 145 with 33 out of 47 teachers serving the schools’ sanctioned posts across the district.

The situation in Upper Kohistan was not much different. Only 152 girls were enrolled in government high schools while 80 students were in the district’s six middle schools, according to the education department data.

In Kolai Palas, 252 students were enrolled in the seven girls’ middle schools, with 49 teachers, per the government data.

Only five teachers were appointed at the Government Girls’ Middle School in Lower Kohistan’s district headquarters.

On the other hand, data obtained from Lower Kohistan’s education department for male students was found to be much different.

The local government has established 215 schools for boys in the district, where 17,537 students were enrolled and 798 teachers worked. However, 259 seats of the teachers remained vacant.

Cultural barriers

Tahira Jabeen, the deputy district education officer (DDEO) for girls in Lower Kohistan, told Dawn.com that the lack of interest from parents and the absence of awareness remained the main reasons behind the low literacy rates at the middle school level.

Jabeen added that cultural barriers were the main reason behind people not letting their children continue education after primary school. She said: “The female literacy rate in Lower Kohitsan is just 2.95 because local people do not send their girls to schools for education.”

Hailing from Mansehra District and appointed in Lower Kohistan in 2022, Jabeen described her active role in this situation. She said she visits students and teachers to create awareness among the families and to convince parents to send their daughters to school but the outcome remained unfruitful.

The DDEO said that she had cancelled the stipend of Rs 1,200 that was being paid to students of middle school by the government in an effort to improve literacy in the area. Despite the move, Jabeen said, the situation was counterproductive and parents were more interested in their children’s stipend than their education.

‘Mindset of a few’

Sultan Khan, a worker at a non-profit organisation (NGO), provided another perspective on the reasons for low literacy in girls: “It is not a concern of cultural barriers but a mindset of a few.

“These people are responsible for constantly trying to push poor people into the dark.”

In August 2018, 12 girls’ schools were torched by miscreants in the Diamer district of Gilgit-Baltistan. With Diamer neighbouring Upper Kohistan, people there speak a common language.

Hailing from Lower Kohistan’s Pattan tehsil, Sultan graduated from the National University of Modern Languages in Islamabad in 2012.

Sultan recalled working in the education sector in 2016-2017 under a project by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), wherein various food items, including cooking oil, were provided to schools.

“At that time those schools were full of students but then all of the girls left,” he sadly remarked. “The so-called religious leaders are the main players who are in opposition to girls’ education in the area,” the NGO worker asserted.

Sultan alleged that the religious leaders used to receive payments and cooking oil, and had their family members appointed to NGOs by “blackmailing government departments, NGOs, and all those who wanted to work for the welfare of the district and themselves”.

The NGO worker also claimed that for female education, the department with local stakeholders had created “fake enrollments” to receive benefits from non-profit organisations.

The reason was to acquire funding received by these NGOs for grocery, payments, among other things, in exchange for working for the female education cause, Sultan said. Whereas, in reality, no one was willing to allow their girls to acquire education, he lamented.

Responding to a question, Sultan said the only solution to the issue was preventing certain elements against girls’ education from interfering in the workings of the government departments and not allowing them to use public spaces and mosques for their vested interests.

Sultan regrettably informed Dawn that a school near his house and the Army Helipad ground, “where few students are enrolled”, had to be closed. Calling it a “long, pathetic story”, he chose not to go into the details, saying it was “not a matter for today”.

Hafeezur Rehman, an educationalist from Upper Kohistan’s Kandia tehsil who served as a district coordinator at Alif-Ailaan — an education project for Kohistan, Shangla, and other areas — highlighted the cultural barriers and the lack of awareness resulting in the discontinuity of girls’ academics.

“The people in these districts believe that a girl, after passing the fifth grade, reaches an age of maturity and is ready to be wed off,” Rehman lamented.

Lower Kohistan Deputy Commissioner (DC) Bashir Ahmad Khan stressed that the first step to be taken in Kohistan was to create awareness about education as people were not willing to send girls to school at all. In some areas of the district, people only send their sons to schools, he said.

In a detailed interview with Dawn.com, DC Ahmad highlighted the absence of seventh-grade headmasters and eighteen-grade principals across government schools in Kohistan. He asserted that the government was performing its due role, but the issue lay at the parents’ end.

“My biggest concern about Kohistan is that this low literacy would have long-term economic and social problems for Kohistan, as currently, the youth are roaming around jobless,” the DC said.

DC Ahmad added that he had strictly directed the female education department officials to improve their work after finding out that there were only four students and seven teachers in a school located in Pattan, the district headquarters of Lower Kohistan.

He informed Dawn.com about his ongoing meetings with NGOs and detailed the requests he had sent to them to come to Kohistan and work on education improvement.

Responding to a question, DC Ahmad said he had asked the district monitoring officer of the education department to halt the salaries of those teachers who were constantly absent from the schools.

Names of female students and the teacher from Kohistan have been changed to protect their privacy.

Header image: Girl students study in a makeshift tent school in Ranolia, Lower Kohistan, in the summer of 2024. — Photo via author/File