Our shadow education: a red light for a failing institution

Every afternoon in Pakistan a second school day begins. Streets in Lahore, Islamabad, Karachi and Peshawar clog with uniformed children hurrying not home, but to tuition centres tucked into basements, plazas and living rooms. Parents call it "extra help", but it is, in truth, a second schooling, a parallel system thriving in the shadows because the first one has failed. What was once considered extra help has quietly become a second schooling. This surge is not a sign of ambition, but is reflective of institutional failure. Parents are paying twice because the system isn't delivering once.

Pakistan's literacy rate has stubbornly hovered around 62 to 63 per cent for years, placing it near the bottom in South Asia. This is not a mark of ambition. It is an indictment especially when over 22 million children remain out of school. Even for those who are enrolled, learning outcomes are bleak. The ASER 2023 survey found that fewer than half of fifth graders could solve a simple two-digit division problem, a skill expected by Grade 3. Overcrowded classrooms, rote-driven instruction and weak accountability have turned schools into holding pens rather than places of learning. Faced with this collapse, families act rationally. They buy educational insurance. In Lahore alone, 62 per cent of secondary students rely on private tuition just to pass their exams. Tuition is no longer a supplement rather it is the scaffolding holding up a crumbling structure.

Teachers are caught in this web too. With salaries in government and low fee private schools averaging Rs25,000 to Rs35,000 per month, private tutoring offers better pay and autonomy. The incentive structure is skewed as the real lessons, the effort and the exam tips are often reserved for evening groups who can pay, not the forty students packed into a public classroom. Punjab has even tried banning government teachers from tutoring, a desperate attempt to contain a conflict of interest that has been allowed to fester for decades.

The problem is deeper than pay. Unlike many countries, Pakistan has no national teacher certification exam tested on universally accepted teaching criteria. Recruitment in both public and private schools often rewards connections, not competence. Without professional benchmarks or meaningful career progression and job security, teaching is treated less as a vocation and more as a stopgap job. This erosion of standards has hollowed out classrooms, driving students and teachers alike into the shadows of the tuition market.

The consequences are corrosive for it fosters a huge disparity within the social structures. Wealthier families can afford multiple tutors and specialist exam preparation, but low-income families are unable to shoulder the double burden, thereby falling further behind. UNESCO has long warned that unregulated tuition widens inequality. In Pakistan, this evidence is visible in every examination season. Policymakers occasionally acknowledge the crisis, promising new hires and minimum salaries, but piecemeal measures cannot fix systemic decay.

Real reform means making schools good enough that tuition becomes unnecessary. That requires professionalising teaching through national certification, paying educators adequately, prioritising foundational literacy and numeracy and providing remedial support within schools instead of outsourcing it to unregulated markets. Tuition centres indicate flashing red warnings, as they signal a loss of public trust, a demoralised profession and a state retreating from its constitutional duty. A nation cannot build its future on a model where every child must attend two schools to receive one education. The shadow will only disappear when the classroom starts working again.