By Muhammad Anwar
Our educational institutions are operating on borrowed time. Between unexpected weather emergencies, political rallies, smog holidays, and sudden fuel shortages, it feels like our children’s schools are closed more often than they are open. Over the last few years, we have slowly normalized a reality in which a truncated academic year is just “the way things are,” while ignoring that our children are paying the ultimate price. When authorities announce yet another closure, the default government response is to quickly declare an “online learning day.” But parents, teachers, and the students themselves know the hard truth: staring at a screen is a temporary bandage, not a viable substitute for a living, breathing classroom. We are sacrificing the foundational years of our youth to administrative convenience and crisis mismanagement.
This normalization of a broken academic year is a stark departure from the past. There was a time, not so long ago, when the school calendar meant something. We all knew with absolute certainty that summer vacations started on the 5th of June and ended on the 31st of August. It was a reliable, sacrosanct schedule. Families could plan their lives, and teachers could pace their lessons. Today, however, educational planning has been hijacked by reactionary governance. Instead of a predictable calendar, parents are now accustomed to a deeply stressful evening routine. The house is finally quiet, the uniforms are ready for the next day, and then your phone lights up with a late-night tweet from a government official: “All schools will remain closed tomorrow.” These midnight declarations aren’t the result of careful administrative planning; they are knee-jerk panic buttons that leave families scrambling and teachers completely unprepared.
The blame for this administrative chaos often falls squarely on the shifting role of our Education Departments. Ideally, these departments are supposed to be the facilitators of our children’s futures, working tirelessly to support schools and keep classroom doors open safely. Instead, they have morphed into mere controllers. Whenever there is a hint of bad weather, a political protest, or a logistical hiccup, their immediate reflex is to pull the plug. They take the path of least resistance by forcing closures with alarming frequency, yet they remain deafeningly silent on the devastating drop in educational standards caused by their decisions. The focus has shifted entirely away from cultivating young minds to simply avoiding administrative headaches.
The educational toll of these decisions is no longer just anecdotal; the proof is in the results. Education is a compounding process that requires rhythm, routine, and consistency. When that rhythm is constantly broken, children don’t just pause their learning; they forget what they have already learned. If you want undeniable proof that syllabuses are being left woefully incomplete, look no further than the recent 10th-class (Matric) board results across Punjab and other provinces. In major boards, we have recently seen overall pass percentages hovering in the mid-60s, while in several rural districts, public school pass rates have crashed below 50 percent. How can we expect a 15-year-old to pass a comprehensive board exam when their school was shut down for weeks at a time, leaving teachers scrambling and skipping crucial chapters just to reach the finish line? These poor board results are the direct, measurable consequence of stolen instructional days.
In a desperate panic to save their children’s board exams and cover these massive gaps, parents are pouring their hard-earned money into private tuition centers and evening academies. But let’s be brutally honest: an academy is not a school. While a tuition center might help a child rote-memorize past papers to barely scrape by in an exam, it offers none of the core developmental benefits of formal schooling. Academies are transaction-based learning factories that do not provide emotional support, the mentorship of a dedicated class teacher, or the vibrant peer interactions that shape a young adult’s character. Relying on an academy to replace a chronically closed school is like taking vitamin pills while starving yourself of real food; it might keep you standing, but it is not true nourishment.
Compounding this issue is the grand illusion of digital learning. Treating online classes as a permanent, equal substitute for physical schooling ignores the massive digital divide in our society. As UNICEF data consistently points out, millions of students lack access to reliable internet, and in many homes, multiple siblings are forced to share a single smartphone to attend class. For these kids, an “online school day” is just a lost day. Furthermore, virtual learning ignores how humans actually learn. In a physical classroom, a good teacher reads the room and adjusts their explanation in response to a student’s confused expression. In a virtual environment, that magical, interactive connection is dead. Schools are micro-societies where children learn conflict resolution, empathy, teamwork, and leadership on the playground and in spirited classroom debates. A screen cannot teach a child how to navigate the physical world.
We cannot keep doing this. If we want to salvage our educational standards, we need a massive shift in how we handle crises. Education must be treated as an essential service, as vital as hospitals and power grids. To achieve this, we must demand facilitation rather than just control. We must hold our Education Departments accountable for educational standards and ensure their mandate is to keep schools open by exploring every safe alternative before hitting the panic button. Furthermore, we must put an end to “tweet governance.” Governments need to invest in proactive solutions, such as climate-resilient schools and better urban planning, rather than relying on late-night social media posts to manage a crisis. Finally, we must actively protect our school zones by legally restricting political rallies and protests from disrupting school routes. An adult’s right to protest should never infringe, in practice, on a child’s right to learn.
A nation’s greatest asset isn’t its natural resources; it’s the minds of its youth. By allowing our schools to become collateral damage to weather, politics, and lazy administration, we are willfully stunting our own progress. We can no longer afford to casually lock the gates of our schools. It’s time we put the phones down, open the classroom doors, and let our children learn.
Muhammad Anwar is the CEO of Freedom Gate Prosperity, with over 30 years of experience in governance, civic engagement, and capacity building, focusing on youth empowerment and climate action in Pakistan.
ceo@fgp.org.pk
