Data on education in Pakistan is getting stronger and deeper thanks to the National Population Census 2023, the regular Pakistan Institute of Education reports consolidated from provincial data and the annual school census. Big data access opens up possibilities for targeted interventions and ‘smart buys’ at the school, district and system levels. Deliberate actions with data driven outcomes, tracked on live dashboards are demonstrating what works and why in Pakistan? With just five years to go for SDGs 2030, the challenges of meeting SDG 4 targets are complex in our country, with the largest number of out of school children (25 million with 53 percent girls) and many more out of learning. Is Pakistan walking the talk with better implementation? If so, where? On this International Day of Education, is Pakistan poised to accelerate solutions responding to the prime minister’s call to action for the National Education Emergency (May 8, 2024)?

At the International Conference on Girls’ Education in Muslim Communities, organized by the Muslim World League and hosted by the government of Pakistan and the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training, I watched a student taking videos of Malala’s address to the global community and the signing of the Islamabad Declaration. The empowerment of an adolescent girl from a public sector school, capturing the bold keynote of the youngest Nobel Prize Laureate Malala Yousufzai, was surely an unforgettable lifechanging experience. Who had extended this opportunity to a young student? None other than a civil servant champion, the secretary education, who has made it his business to empower school leaders and young students with a ‘just do it’ mantra for every child in the Islamabad Capital Territory through academic, multi-sectoral interventions and hybrid innovative financing, including public private partnerships.

Inspired by the experience in designing and rolling out interventions in the exquisite tough valleys and mountains of Gilgit-Baltistan as chief secretary, Mohyuddin Wani was keen to adapt and create a blueprint of rapid at-scale implementation for replication anywhere. He knows that a combination of whole school and system-based interventions centred on students and teachers as leaders will work. It is enabled by contemporary foundational learning anchored in digital/ AI/ coding skills together with care, health/ nutrition and respect for all, learning from bold models of education reform in South Asian countries such as the Delhi Schools Model. He has been transforming with teams, 425 ICT Federal Directorate of Education’s schools and colleges and 283 TVET institutions through a 360-degree cross-sectoral treatment, combining data-driven, academic and non-academic interventions in government mainstream programmes backed by policies, laws and processes. The implementation has been at a breakneck pace from March to December 2024, by an on-ground activist civil servant supported by the political will of the minister, parliamentary secretary, FDE teams and allies in public and private sectors and donor community.

32 documented and costed interventions have been rolled out in the institutions covering 225,000 students and 9,700 teachers in sub-sectors of ECCE, primary, secondary, higher secondary and colleges. They range from conducive attractive safe facilities harnessing 21st Century learning capabilities, resilience, quality with equity and inclusion. The evolving blueprint has all the indicators tracked for an SDG 4 report card, with 80,000 out of school children in the capital city due to high rural to urban migration.

The Islamabad Declaration for Girls’ Education and Gender Equality in Islamic Societies underscored girls’ education as a religious obligation and a societal need to be tackled inclusively by digital technologies and content through strategic global partnerships.

The 32 model education interventions can be categorised as: a) fit for purpose facility improvements with sports, arts/ crafts, digital spaces and solar energy (ECCE to colleges); b) workforce adequacy, cluster based coaching training and support through the National Institute of Excellence in Teacher Education and Teach for Pakistan with face to face and hybrid technologies and a principal in each school; c) foundational learning, reading hour and active libraries; summer school fiesta; developing lively content for children’s books; d) the Prime Minister’s Health and Hygiene and School Meals Programme and Pink Buses for female students and teachers from rural to urban areas; e) at scale digital transformation through smart classrooms/ e-Taleem portal for blended learning, high impact, digital hubs/ chrome labs in rural schools; Google centres of excellence; robotics/ STEAM rooms, astronomy, digital labs in colleges; e-Rozgar centres, software tech parks, financial literacy, TVET and entrepreneurship programmes; recruitment of tech coding fellows; f) climate change/ kitchen gardening; foreign language labs; g) sports and mind games, gyms, girls sports carnivals, podcasts rooms, Pakistan Learning Festival; and h) Daanish Schools in ICT, AJK, GB and Balochistan. These are great public services with enablers and higher enrolment in transformed public schools, strong transition from ECE to grade 12 with good learning outcomes – our winter mustards in bloom.

The interventions are building on the Covid-19 digital acceleration in Pakistan. The Ed Tech/ AI space is gaining momentum, endorsed recently at the EdTech Pakistan conference in December 2024, hosted by SABAQ and sponsors fostering partnerships for innovations and actionable at scale solutions. The Islamabad Declaration (17 articles) for Girls Education and Gender Equality in Islamic Societies underscored girls’ education as a religious obligation and a societal need to be tackled inclusively by digital technologies and content through strategic global partnerships. Harnessing digital and AI platforms for scaling to reach all children, especially girls, is backed by the government, technology providers, industry investors and civil society actors. Higher internet connectivity must be matched by almost universal access to cell phones in Pakistan. Challenges of intra-household access to technology for girls/ women and teachers must be overcome if technology is to be a powerful equaliser.

The Foundational Learning movement in Pakistan inspired by the Sobral, Brazilian experiential visit by Pakistan’s education leadership in 2022 led to big actions. In 2023, the Pakistan Foundational Learning Hub was established by the MoFE and PT, crowdsourcing solutions that work; five foundational learning policies are in place notified by the provincial and federal governments, three with links to ECCE. Large programmes such as GOAL, ASPIRE, SELECT, are by design addressing out of school children and girls’ education in lagging districts as is a five-year education roadmap through multi-sectoral approaches in Sindh. Tracking, targeting and implementing at scale needs strong local district level and provincial delivery units with leadership and capacity, combining both political and bureaucratic will as champions of education to reach every child who is not in school and not in learning. The models of what works are growing.

High population countries like Brazil, India and Bangladesh are managing universal education coverage with successful population management. In Pakistan, too, the education emergency needs actions for curtailing the runaway population growth undermining education initiatives with a meagre 1.5 percent GDP allocation. Planning in silos is not a possibility; the poly-crisis has spilled into health, nutrition and well-being challenges needing holistic actions that make way for an education spring in Pakistan.

The writer is the CEO of Idara-i-Taleem-o-Aagahi. She is a founder of the Pakistan Learning Festival and a global champion of the Learning Generation Initiative. She can be reached at baela.jamil@itacec.org