Thousands of students and teachers in Karachi East and Hyderabad districts participated in the STEAM Muqablo, the Sindh government’s competition for secondary schools where students and teachers came up with innovative, multi-disciplinary solutions to the world’s current and future problems this past weekend.
Judges and visitors included professors, artists, designers, researchers, founders of virtual reality startups, in addition to parents, educationists and the local political leadership. The STEAM Muqablo was launched by the School Education and Literacy Department of the government of Sindh in late August with the goal of inspiring schoolchildren to explore the fascinating world of STEAM that brings together Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics as tools to solve real-world problems of climate change, urbanization as well as to heritage and culture, as they present in Sindh’s local context.
The challenges were carefully designed to encourage students to get immersed in turning on their creativity, using an interdisciplinary approach, keeping it low-cost and local, and employing what they had learned in science, maths, and computers while valuing the indigenous wisdom of their land.
The students’ projects spanned a wide range of domains, demonstrating their creativity and problem-solving skills. Projects that were exceptional included a test tube and candystick piano for the Engineer a Musical Instrument challenge, soothing chimes crafted from old keys, drumkits featuring twisted spoons and tin cans, xylophones repurposed cough syrup bottles; as well as load-bearing boats made from coconut palm leaves, chatai, discarded bottles and takeaway boxes.
These projects beautifully showcased the core principles of STEAM – Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics – by combining materials, design, and environmental inspiration in creative ways. The creativity and innovation reflected in these entries truly embody the mission of STEAM Muqablo, with a focus on fostering resilience, knowledge, and innovation.
Asma Bhatti, Deputy Director of Quality Assurance, Directorate Hyderabad and regional focal person for STEAM said: “Teachers shared that students were observed to have found and utilised materials from their surroundings including wild grass to make boats and had also thought through how to scale their solutions could be scaled for a real flood. Judges were specially noting that students knew the science and relevant laws behind how their solutions worked.”
“It’s great to see our vision for the STEAM Muqablo come to life both at the school and district levels - a model implementation of effective decentralisation in the school system. Students went beyond our expectations and beautifully identified and employed both indigenous knowledge and classroom learning to present novel solutions to problems of climate change or make artworks related to culture!” shared Sana Kazmi, Lead, STEAM Policy Unit.
District focal persons for STEAM were nominated and trained in each district to not only mobilise schools for the competition but also implement a year-round STEAM program by the department. Many of the most successful districts have been led by women, one of whom was at the forefront of the competition in Karachi East.
“The most important aspect of the competition is the interdisciplinarity; it is not only focused on Science or one specific subject, but rather Maths, Engineering, Technology, Arts including Science to come up with practical solutions to real-world problems. The competition is instilling a problem-solving spirit in students that goes beyond academics and extra-curriculars to real-life problems,” said Seema Zahid, the district focal person for STEAM in Karachi East where schools and district teams put up a grand showcase, including not just the projects proposing solutions to the STEAM Muqablo challenges but also featuring a STEAM quiz competition, teachers’ workshops on using the STEAM approach in the classroom and art and science displays.
The Hyderabad STEAM Muqablo and the Karachi East STEAM Muqablo were part of a larger competition, where 30 district-level competitions are happening across all districts of Sindh since December 2024.
The competition continues this week with meets scheduled in Matiari, Kashmore Kandhkot, Jamshoro, Tharparkar, Tando Allahyar and Umerkot.