Learning poverty

Once a student asked me a question that was far more serious than anything I would normally expect to hear in the classroom. "Sir, how are we supposed to continue our education when we cannot afford it?" I had no easy answer.

Being a teacher, we tell children that education is their ticket to a better life. We tell parents that education is the best investment they can make. We tell the country that its future depends on an educated generation.

A report revealed that Pakistani households spent Rs2.8 trillion on education, compared with Rs2.23 trillion spent by the public sector. In other words, families financed 56% of the country's total education expenditure.

Stop there for a moment. If families are paying more for education than the state, how much of an educational right is actually being exercised? And the poorest families are not the ones with spare money. They are the ones forced to choose. School fee or electricity bill? Books or groceries? Transport fare or medicine?

When education becomes a competition against basic necessities, dropping out is no longer necessarily a matter of losing interest. Sometimes it is simply mathematics. And Pakistan's mathematics is worrying.

We often cite that 28.2 million school-age children are out of school. But what about those who are actually inside schools? An education survey 2026 found that 77% of 10-year-olds could not read and understand a simple text. Do you call that literacy?

We often talk about merit as if every child begins from the same starting line. They do not. One student attend a well-resourced private school, have qualified teachers, private tuition, a computer, internet access and a quiet room in which to study. Another sits in an overcrowded classroom, share textbooks with siblings, travel long distances to school and study at night when electricity is available.

Then we put both students in the same examination hall and call the result pure merit. Is it?

I am not arguing against merit. Quite the opposite. Merit matters. But opportunity comes before merit can be fairly measured. The question should not only be, "Who scored the highest?" It should also be, "Who achieved this despite having the least?"

The Constitution already recognises the importance of education. Article 25-A guarantees free and compulsory education for children between 5 and 16 years of age. But what happens after 16? Does the need for education suddenly disappear? Does poverty stop mattering when a student enters university?

Of course not. In fact, the financial burden often becomes greater.

Pakistan needs doctors, engineers, scientists, teachers, technicians, researchers, IT professionals and skilled workers. We speak of our young population as a demographic opportunity, but a young population without affordable, quality education can become an opportunity lost.

And this is happening at precisely the wrong time. Education spending is only 0.8% of GDP this year, down from previous years.

We cannot want a knowledge economy while treating education as an expense to be postponed. We cannot talk about competing with the world while telling poor families to somehow find the money.

The answer is not simply to abolish every fee, nor is it realistic to expect the state to finance every educational expense without limits. What we need is stronger public education, better teachers, transparent financial assistance, affordable higher and technical education, and greater investment in digital access and skills.

Above all, education must be treated as a national investment rather than a private burden.

Because when a talented student drops out, Pakistan does not save the cost of educating that student. It loses the doctor, engineer, teacher, scientist or skilled professional that student might have become.

Perhaps we should stop asking poor families why they cannot afford to educate their children.

Education is supposed to be the ladder out of poverty. We should not make the ladder so expensive that the poor cannot reach it.