Abstract

Literacy is the first step towards independent and life-long learning. It is one of the important instruments for equipping people with minimum knowledge and skills that can help individuals to contribute effectively to the socio-economic development of the country. Illiteracy of masses hinders social reforms, alleviates poverty and modernization in a society and thus impedes overall economic productivity. In Pakistan, different literacy improvement efforts have been made but the literacy rate continued to be low, with over one-half of the adult population still illiterate. On other hand, most of the regional countries like Malaysia, Maldives, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, and Thailand have literacy rates between 75 and 100 percent. So, this study has been designed to determine the literacy status of Pakistan among South Asian countries especially the Muslims countries and to analyze the literacy efforts of the countries having higher literacy rate. Findings of the study revealed that Pakistan lags behind many nations in its literacy efforts even at the dawn of the 21st century and stood at 32nd rank amongst 48 Muslim countries which indicates cursory and alarming situation. Study also revealed that the important factor in raising both literacy and participation rates at primary level is public expenditure on primary education per pupil as a simple percentage of per capital Gross National Product (GNP). Majority of the countries are spending from 8 to 15 percent of their per capita GNP per pupil in primary education which helps in improving the literacy rate of these countries.