In my classroom, I encounter students who are more concerned with securing marks than acquiring knowledge. Some have learned to memorise answers, while others believe grades could be secured through influence or money. Parents, too, often measure educational success by examination scores and admission to prestigious university programmes. The result is an education culture in which certificates matter more than competence and grades matter more than genuine learning.
While conducting research into why Pakistan has failed to provide the education its children need, I found that the country’s education sector is facing a severe learning crisis. Some schools exist only in government records, with little or no student enrolment in reality. Even where schools function, the curriculum and teaching methods often focus more on cramming and examination performance than on practical education.
The 2025 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) estimates that about 26.2 million school-age children are out of formal schooling. Among those who are enrolled, many still struggle to read and write with a proper understanding of the language used in education. Others lack digital literacy, which is now an important part of education.
Enrolment is not education, and examination success is not learning. This is where the problem of learning poverty begins. A child may attend school for years and still fail to acquire basic literacy and skills. Similarly, a student may achieve high marks through memorisation without developing the ability to think positively, solve problems or apply knowledge to real-life situations.
A grave area of concern is that we have schools, but they face different challenges. Government schools often have resources but lack accountability, suffer from low enrolment and continue to rely on traditional teaching methods. Private schools, meanwhile, may perform better academically but face their own problems, including limited resources, high fees and poorly paid teachers, some of whom have only a graduation-level qualification.
