School absenteeism is oftentimes couched in Pakistan's local media and reports of development agencies in terms of "ghost schools" and "ghost teachers." Little has been written in the scholarly literature of the universal right to education about how this phenomenon is affecting the school attendance of primary and secondary school students with physical disabilities and learning difficulties. We propose the qualitative distinction between being school-less and being out-of-school as a conceptual tool to encourage fresh thinking about special needs education and teacher training in places, where public education is understaffed and underfunded, as in the politically unstable and impoverished province of Baluchistan bordering on Iran to the West and Afghanistan to the North. Instead of critiquing the lagging reform process and lack of service provision for children with special educational needs, we make this theoretical intervention to illuminate opportunities for curricular innovation in this under-researched segment of South Asia's evolving educational landscape. On-site observations at two schools for children with disabilities in Quetta complemented the questionnaires that inform this social analysis. In spite of the limitations of the linear regression model's findings draw into the discussion attitudinal differences vis-à-vis boys and girls with disabilities and fears of child abuse.