Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what support they will provide to the government of Pakistan to help incentivise parents from marginalised religious minorities to send their children to school, following reports that many such parents view school as a waste of time owing to the lack of opportunities in higher education.

DFID education programmes support a range of interventions to improve equity and inclusion in education, targeting the most marginalised communities, including religious minorities. This includes providing secondary and higher education scholarships to help incentivise parents from marginalised communities to send their children to school. In Punjab, scholarships have been provided to over 50,000 girls from poor families that reside in the most remote and marginalized districts of Punjab, some with a significant population of minority groups. Since 2010, DFID’s skills Development Programme has trained over 332,000 poor and vulnerable people to improve their employment prospects. This includes more than 3,800 people from religious minorities. The programme aims to provide training to a further 5,000 people from religious minorities by 2021.