In Pakistan, all children between 5 and 16 years of age have the right to 12 years of school education. The public school system is the main provider of schooling. Pakistan takes explicit account of gender in the provision of schooling, especially in public schools at post-primary levels, with girls’ schools with female teachers and boys’ schools with male teachers.

While the policy context has always been supportive of universal school education, there is a significant gap in access, especially for girls at post-primary levels. The private sector has an increasingly large share in education with strong public–private partnership models to enhance access to quality education for the needy. Mostly, the medium of instruction is Urdu in public schools and English in private schools.

This chapter describes the school education system in Pakistan and provides insights into issues of access, expansion, and equity in the specific sociocultural and language context of the country.