Across Pakistan’s towns and cities, families wrestle with agonising choices each month: which bill to pay, which cost to delay and, increasingly, whether to keep paying school fees.
After rent and food, little remains. For many households, that scarcity means deciding which child gets to stay in school. More often than not, boys are prioritised while girls are asked to step aside – a reflection of entrenched cultural norms that see sons as future breadwinners and daughters as eventual dependents of another household. This quiet inequality continues to deny millions of girls the education they deserve.
Pakistan’s education system mirrors the country’s social divides. It ranges from elite urban schools with international curricula to under-resourced public schools, a booming private-tuition market and new ed-tech platforms promising quick skills.
For students, this variety can feel less like an opportunity and more like a lottery. Those with resources buy access to private schools and tutoring; those without must settle for struggling public institutions or make impossible choices about which child to educate. Rising numbers of out-of-school children, alongside recurring protests over fee hikes, reflect this growing tension between aspiration and affordability.
One defining force in this landscape is Pakistan’s ‘tuition culture’. Millions of students attend after-school coaching simply to keep pace with exams and admissions. Surveys show the majority of urban students rely on such extra lessons, a symptom of both gaps in formal schooling and the relentless pressure for measurable outcomes. For families, this means heavier costs; for students, it means long days of rote learning with little room left for creativity or critical thinking. Education becomes not a journey of discovery, but a cycle of instruction, memorisation and testing.
The consequences are painfully human. Human Rights Watch tells the story of Saba, a girl who sells potatoes outside the private school she dreams of entering – while her brothers study inside. In cities nationwide, parents have staged protests against sudden tuition hikes at private schools, a sign of the deep frustration when education slips further out of reach.
These stories are part of a larger pattern in which financial pressures, cultural preferences and market forces converge to determine children’s futures. Gender bias still dictates who gets to learn. Rising costs push families into trade-offs that leave children behind. And the result is a widening gap between the promise of education and its actual accessibility.
The real question for Pakistan is not whether private schools or ed-tech ventures should exist but whether the country is willing to let profit and credentialing dominate the very purpose of education. The alternative is a system that puts knowledge, civic participation, and equal opportunity at its core, regardless of income, gender, or geography.
That shift is possible. It requires investment in public schools – better facilities, trained teachers and curricula that encourage problem-solving rather than rote memorisation. It demands accountability and transparency in private-sector fees. And it calls for targeted programmes that break gender barriers: stipends for girls, safe transport and community incentives for equal enrollment.
If education continues to be treated merely as a market transaction, Pakistan risks shutting out millions of its youth from the future they deserve. But if it commits to opening equal doors for girls and boys alike, it will gain more than students. It will nurture the next generation of leaders, innovators and citizens who can transform the country.
For families deciding today which child goes to school and which does not, this is not an abstract debate. It is the difference between a door opened and a door closed.
(Opinion) Published in The NEWS on November 22, 2025.
