KARACHI:
Decorating classrooms for inspection days is one of the polished frauds in the education system. It is a deceptive, theatrical and choreographed compliance ritual.
Let’s look at the average classroom during a normal school day: Broken benches, some with nails sticking out. Ceiling fans making strange noises or are completely dead. Dirty blackboards and chalk dust everywhere. A single duster shuffling between classes. No dustbin, so wrappers and papers pile up in corners. No proper storage for books or bags. Cracked walls and some with fungus growing on them. A teacher who hasn’t had a proper break or even clean drinking water.
Now flip to inspection day: Desks are perfectly aligned, most borrowed from other classrooms. Walls papered in hurriedly printed “student work” from the teacher’s home printer. Blackboard cleaned until it shines. A new duster appears. A plastic dustbin with nothing inside, just placed to impress. Class monitor rehearsed to say, “Good morning, respected sir!” in perfect English. Teachers told to smile, nod and pretend all is well. That’s not a school. That’s a film set. What they call “preparation” is actually a cover-up job.
Worse, teachers are forced to pay for this fakery out of their shrinking paychecks. Instead of focusing on lesson plans, they’re asked to become decorators. They’re buying tape, glue sticks, thermocol, plastic flowers, motivational posters — all while barely earning enough to survive. They stay after school, come early and skip breaks. And for what? To build a fake world that fools a man who walks in, smiles, nods and walks right back out.
Now let’s talk about what the inspector doesn’t see for 364 days. They don’t see the rusted fans that barely work. The overcrowded classes where 60 kids are crammed into a room built for 30. The bathrooms with perpetually clogged toilets and empty soap dispensers. The computer lab where half the keyboards have missing keys. The inspectors get the first-class tour of a fantasy. And then they go home and write a nice little report about how “excellent” everything looked.
Yumna Zahid Ali
Karachi
