A child’s journey to school should never be a gamble. Yet in Pakistan, thousands of students travel every day in overcrowded vans, ageing Suzuki vehicles and rickshaws that are often poorly maintained and sometimes fitted with dangerously installed LPG cylinders. That this has been allowed to become routine
Pakistan’s education crisis is not simply a crisis of outdated textbooks. It is a crisis of an outdated educational philosophy. While the world is moving towards AI, automation and knowledge-based industries, too many of our classrooms remain organised around memorisation, rote learning and examination scores. We have modernised
THE floods are visiting us again. The death toll will be counted within days. The damage to roads, bridges and embankments will be tallied within weeks and translated into a dollar figure. Expect this assessment to dominate the coverage. It is legitimate but a wrong ledger regardless. The
All those who used to attend school before 2020 can relate to many things. Covid-19 was a major disruptor that entirely changed the routine and productivity of human life. When I was doing my matriculation in a government school, we used to attend a daily strict exercise and
When summer vacations begin, Sobia Nisar tries to let her six-year-old daughter enjoy the first few weeks without too much structure. There are visits to cousins, occasional trips to the park, time at home, and an effort to keep screen time as low as possible. But keeping a
Education, deemed as the most significant marker for progress in any nation, is kept at an unbelievably low rung of Pakistan’s priority ladder. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the country has a literacy rate of only 62.3%, and around 26.2 million out-of-school children aged 5-16. Late-stage
Pakistan is a signatory to the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, which calls for inclusive and equitable quality education for all by 2030. Unfortunately, the country remains far from achieving this target. According to media reports, the national literacy rate has reached 63%, with male literacy at
It has been over two years since the country declared a National Education Emergency, but Pakistan is still stuck with the second-largest out-of-school population globally. A new comprehensive comparative policy review, prepared by the Civil Services Academy (CSA) and reported on by the media earlier this week, estimates
During the fiscal year 2025-26, Pakistan’s economy demonstrated significant resilience and restored macroeconomic stability, achieving a provisional GDP growth rate of 3.70 percent compared to 3.18 percent the previous year. This positive trajectory was driven by a robust recovery across all major economic sectors, with agriculture expanding by
The magnitude of drug abuse among students in Karachi continues to get worse, despite intervention efforts by the government and social welfare groups. While reliable data is hard to come by due to taboos around the subject, a 2024 survey by the Pakistan Narcotics Control Board found that
Pakistan’s Economic Survey 2025-26 offers a useful yardstick to gauge the state of the country’s health and education sectors over the past year. The assessment, however, offers little cause for celebration. Beneath the government’s claims of gradual progress, Pakistan continues to rank among the poorest performers in South
A DECADE ago, during one of the ‘Growing Up’ sessions I was holding in Karachi schools, I talked to seventh graders about drugs and addiction. Their interest and giggling prompted me to ask whether they knew where drugs could be obtained. They named several locations. Later, I realised