What do I know?

Three decades ago, in the mid 1990s, when I appeared for my matric and intermediate exams for the Federal Board in Islamabad, I was following in the footsteps of everyone I knew. My siblings, my cousins, our neighbours, children of our parents' friends, the kids who played in the same playground I played – everyone went through the same system. This included the children of senior bureaucrats and high-ranking military officials and those who were of very modest means. Some of my classmates came to school on a cramped Vespa with their dads and some had uniformed drivers waiting in brand new cars for them after school. But all of us were part of the same system.

Today I do not know a single person in our social network who is part of the national higher secondary school system. Everyone – my nieces and nephews, the children of my friends, the younger cousins on my side of the family and those on my wife's side, and all our social acquaintances – are part of the O and A-level system. This is not a new observation on my part. I have thought a lot about it and have occasionally written about it too. For the longest time, I believed this was because of the failure of the public system, its poor governance and the collapse of trust among parents and students. This was further reinforced by my interactions with families that are not very affluent but are making adjustments in their budget to ensure that their children study in the O and A level system.

But I have realised that my understanding, if not entirely inaccurate, is certainly incomplete. There are indeed many problems with the national system, but there is an even bigger problem with my own perspective. Through a series of random conversations, I got interested in looking at what percentage of students in Pakistan study in the national system, and what percentage are part of the O and A level system. I dug up statistics and read news reports. I called up some friends and reached out to some colleagues. Through this exercise, I learned that the total number of students who appear for O and A level exams every year is close to a hundred thousand. There are slightly more students in O level exams than in A levels. Even if we make the assumption that the number is the same, there would be about fifty thousand A level students per year. Now compare this to the total number of students who appear for Grade 12 (intermediate exams). That number is over a million as per data from Gallup Pakistan. This means that if there are one hundred high school students in the country, 5 per cent are part of the international system, and 95 per cent are part the national system. Ignoring some minor statistical variations, this is a huge gap.

For me, this gap is deeply troubling on a personal level. It is the recognition of my extremely limited purview. I am troubled by the fact that my entire social network – of family, friends, in-laws, neighbours and everyone I engage with far and wide – is part of only 5-6 per cent of the country. Sure, I talk to the kind driver who drives me to my meetings, or the shopkeeper who is more generous than most rich people I know, but I never truly interact with them. I never have long or deep conversations with them. We never debate about anything. My discussions on research, history, music, literature or politics are with a tiny sliver of society. Myself, and everyone I know, only engages and interacts with a group that does not even make double digits in terms of percentage of the population. Even those who may seem modest in their means to me are part of this very small group.

I have been reflecting on this for a few weeks now and recognise that even when I take great pride in knowing different people and hearing diverse perspectives, I am in fact only talking to, and hearing from, a very small segment – a privileged club of sorts. I, and everyone I speak to, is part of a tiny minority. I need to do better.