During February half term I visited Pakistan to look at women’s rights and development in a country which has traditionally been male dominated. I was struck by their government’s absolute commitment to improving women’s lives.

Pakistan has a quota system to ensure that 20% of their MP’s are women and this has transformed the policy making process.

Nowhere was this more evident than in education. In Pakistan only 1/3 of women are literate compared to 2/3 of men. I met the Minister for Education who is committed not just to improving literacy for all but to redressing the gender balance.

Incentives have been introduced to encourage the enrolment of girls in schools and there is a massive adult women’s literacy programme. I visited a rural village outside Islamabad, where just such a programme is underway.

I met a large group of women at varying stages in their studies. It is a 180 hour programme delivered over 12 weeks, after which the women will be able to read newspaper headlines, write their names, and do simple maths. More importantly they will also be able to read the labels on their children’s medicine, vital in a country which still has high levels of disease. After the basic course they go on to more advanced studies, including English.

Through an interpreter these women couldn’t wait to tell me how proud they were of their new skills and you could visibly see their self-confidence growing. As one woman told me, she now had respect in her village because she could read and write her own name. These women were fiercely ambitious and when I asked them what more they wanted for their very poor community they said “More books and more education”.

They may have been poor but there was no shortage of ambition and aspiration for themselves and their children. I wish I could have bottled just a little bit of that enthusiasm and brought it back to Portsmouth so that I could sprinkle it liberally among some of our parents and children who don’t always appreciate the value of the education that is freely available here.