TENSIONS between Pakistan and India have once again led to incursions and attacks. And there are real fears of escalation to a full-scale war between the two countries that have nuclear weapons. India attacked several places early on 7th May. Given the situation, the Islamabad and Punjab governments announced the closure of all educational institutions on 7th May. The situation is very tense and fears of escalation are very much there, especially given the drone incursions across Pakistan on 8th May.
But there were no instructions, from the education departments about Thursday or the next few days for that matter. All schools and universities have been taking their own decisions and moving from one decision to another. My daughter’s school sent a message on Wednesday night that classes would be in person and on campus. Early morning, when we were getting ready, we got a message that classes would be online. And we have just received a message that education will be online till further notice. Some universities have moved classes online for a few days. Others are carrying on in person. Some have allowed students to have more flexibility and decide whether they want to come in or not.
Emergencies in Pakistan are becoming more frequent and raising uncertainties for everyone. I do not remember having this situation in the days and years when I was in college or school. In recent times, we have seen schools and universities being shut down during the pandemic, smog, cricket matches, visits of dignitaries, conflict or fear of war, public protests, anticipated public protests, rain, floods, cold and heat. I am sure I am forgetting some of the other reasons. The number of days that are lost from the education perspective has gone up.
This disrupts education delivery for sure. It upsets students, upsets their learning, makes continuity, covering the syllabus and other planned lessons difficult, makes teaching a lot harder for the already stressed-out and stretched-to-the-limit instructors, and lowers educational outcomes. We have plenty of evidence of poorer learning outcomes from the pandemic days.
Here is just a small example. It is almost the end of the spring semester for a lot of universities and they were gearing up for examinations. There are many universities that have hostels too where a lot of young people are staying. These young people are away from their families. In a situation like the current one, it is inevitable that parents would be concerned about children who are away from them. And many young people might be feeling concerned or scared too and might need the comfort of their parents and families. Should universities let young people go home? Should they postpone examinations? Should they move to online examinations? Or should they expect young people to soldier on irrespective of what is happening?
Every time something like this happens, the response is always the same. Yes, this is bad, but what can we do? We cannot endanger our children or expose them to x, y, or z. It is true that once we are in a situation, there is not a whole lot that can be done, but should we then not start preparing for such situations through regular planning? Should contingency planning not get more attention from the educational authorities and regulators? We might not be able to plan for all contingencies as nature or circumstances can always spring new surprises on us, but we can start anticipating many things. Smog is going to hit us in large parts of Punjab, KP and some parts of Sindh for sure and a number of times in a year. Extreme weather conditions and events are becoming the norm and are to be expected. Political protests will happen. Terror attacks have seen an uptick and it seems they will be with us for the foreseeable future. And, it seems, we will keep repeating the tension cycle with India, as will they.
Should provincial education departments as well as the HEC, the higher education regulator, not go through an exercise that does some contingency planning for how to respond to situations that we are going to see more of? Some scenarios could be developed as guidelines for universities and schools, to figure out responses and to also, if needed, invest in appropriate infrastructure and/ or services, to ensure that the switch to contingency is as smooth as possible. What sort of investment should be made in public school infrastructure or services, and teacher training to ensure better delivery of education services when contingencies arise? It is the schools with fewer resources, in the public as well as private sector, that suffer more and will suffer more. But these are the very schools we should be more worried about as they are in the majority and learning poverty already tends to be higher in them.
When we came back from Covid — and we were back in person — a lot of universities and schools stopped paying for Zoom licences as it was considered a waste of money. Now, when we have to switch, schools use the free Zoom facility but then have to tailor classes for free sessions. Or they have to switch to other free platforms which teachers might or might not be familiar with.
There is definitely a need for better contingency planning. Extreme events or unpredictable events are increasing. They are becoming more ‘predictable’ and so we need to take them into account in education planning at both the school and university level. At one time it was just about the unpredictability of load-shedding. All of us individually arranged for generators or UPS, etc. Now it is at a much bigger level; we will need institutional and public responses to these.
(Opinion) Published in Dawn, May 9th, 2025
