Challenges Associated with Primary Education in Rural Punjab, Pakistan

Primary Education in Pakistan has been a major challenge especially in rural areas that are culturally rich and rigid and where it has always been ignored as compared to urban areas. Exploring the parents, teachers' perceptions about education, performance of public and private education sector, children daily life and integration of informal and formal education, this study disclosed the challenges other than quantitative challenges in rights-based education provision. This study pursues a qualitative approach for data collection, and partially quantitative analysis to support qualitative study of the topic. Observation, interviews with parents, teachers and school-owners and children questionnaires was the major source of data collection. On a small-scale essay/paragraph writing as children friendly method was also used. With a total of 128 individuals involved in the research, of whom 86 percent were children and 60 percent were female, the study explores important challenges associated with education in rural areas of the Punjab.