26 Million Out of School, 46 in 100 Finishing Grade 10: Planning Minister Calls It a National Emergency

Pakistan's Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives, Ahsan Iqbal, chaired the first meeting of the Human Capital and Skills Mission on October 7, 2026, and used it to put a blunt frame on a set of numbers the country has circled for years: education, health, nutrition, clean water and population growth, he told the meeting, need to be treated as a national emergency, with at least a decade of sustained, coordinated effort before the indicators meaningfully move.

The numbers behind the "emergency" label

The briefing, reported by APP, put Pakistan's out-of-school children population at around 26 million, or 28% of the school-age population, a problem this desk has covered previously. Of children who do enter Class 1 in public schools, only 46 in every 100 reach Class 10, a dropout curve that explains why enrolment figures alone understate the problem. On health, the meeting cited a stunting rate of 40.2% and maternal mortality of 186 deaths per 100,000 live births, against a Sustainable Development Goal target of 70. Pakistan was ranked 168th of 193 countries on the Human Development Index, and its Human Capital Index score was put at 0.41. On population, Iqbal flagged a 2.55% annual growth rate as a standalone constraint on every other target, with roughly 2 million young people entering the labour market each year that the economy has to find room for.

What the mission is targeting

The Human Capital and Skills Mission is the seventh of 11 national economic missions under URAAN Pakistan, the government's economic framework. Its stated targets include cutting maternal mortality by 35%, cutting both stunting and under-five mortality by 18% each, raising the share of births attended by skilled health workers to 85%, lifting education spending to 4% of GDP, and improving the literacy rate by 10%. According to ProPakistani's report on the meeting, the targets also include creating 1.5 million jobs a year, raising women's labour force participation by 17% and raising health spending to 2% of GDP, and they will be broken into annual, provincial and regional milestones.

The devolution argument

Iqbal said the 18th Amendment was meant to improve social services, but that the failure to devolve authority to the local level had limited progress. He called for empowered district-level departments, governance reforms in education, health and other social sectors, and for provincial governments to post senior officers to those departments.

How the mission will work

Federal-provincial working groups on education, health and population, skills, and nutrition will meet every two weeks to resolve bottlenecks and report to the mission's Executive Committee, according to APP. The federal government is to set standards, coordinate policy and consolidate data, while the provinces lead implementation in sectors largely under their jurisdiction. Iqbal said the country needs "policy continuity and political stability" to meet its long-term goals.

Build Better Pakistan's Education Desk tracks Pakistan's human-capital and schooling indicators and will follow the Human Capital and Skills Mission's working groups as they take shape.