The country`s educational ministry has yet to launch a national education policy, at a time when Pakistan is facing several challenges in the education sector, including poor infrastructure and with 22 million children out of school.

After stading the process of revising the existing education policy of 2009, the federal Ministry of Education and Professional Training had announced a couple of years ago that a new educational policy will be announced in Jan 2016. It was later decided that the policy will be announced in June last year but according to sources, a lot of work is yet to be done on the policy.

The country has already missed several major targets set in the existing education policy such as the literacy rate should have been raised to 86pc by 2015 but it is still around 60pc.

According to the current policy, all children should have been in school by the end of 2015 but today, Pakistan has 22.6 million out of school children, the second most in the world after Nigeria.

The National Education Policy 2009 called for increasing the education budget up to 7pc of the GDP.

Officials in the education ministry Dawn spoke to said the matter is not being given due attention by the ministry. `I don`t think the education policy will be launched by the end of this year as well, an official of the ministry said. However, Education Secretary Shoaib Mir told Dawn the draft policy will be placed for approval in the upcoming inter-provincial education minister`s conference.

`The minister is continuously working on this project. I cannot give you a date but we are making all efforts to finalise it as soon as possible,` he said, adding that the ministry has already gotten feedback from Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh on the draft policy.

`We are holding consultations with all stakeholders,` he said.

An official involved in the process of making the new education policy said the new policy will include new targets in accordance with Pakistan`s international commitments such as the Sustainable Development Goals and that some clauses of the 2009 policy will also be deleted.

Last year, a review committee had proposed amendments to the 2009 policy and had recommended adding nine chapters to it which will also cover madressahs and information technology.