Tears and jubilation abound as underprivileged children battle it out for academic glory

Teams from 12 Teach for Pakistan schools participate in Academic Olympiad.

KARACHI: Saturday morning, 10 am. All my exhaustion dissipates as I step into the venue hall for Teach for Pakistan’s (TFP) Academic Olympiad 2013. The air is abuzz; the excitement palpable. The low drone of chattering students is broken momentarily by the quiz conductor’s ringing voice: “Ten points to Behbud,” she calls out. The audience breaks into applause.

The Olympiad has been organised by Teach for Pakistan, an initiative of the Aman Foundation. The competition has brought students from 12 schools from all over Karachi to compete with each other for academic and intellectual supremacy. Participants are being quizzed on math, science and English. But this is not just another interschool competition: these students all hail from deprived communities across Karachi.

“This is the first time our kids are getting so much exposure,” the visibly proud Teach for Pakistan CEO Khadija Bakhtiar tells me. “This event is a celebration for us. We’re very, very excited. This activity has generated a lot of interest in learning among the kids; they really want to excel in front of everyone.”

She leaves me with Huda Ahmed – a TFP ‘fellow’, which is what the teachers are known as. As the conductor fires questions at the participants, we chat about her work. Huda is a dentist by education, but has always wanted to teach. While discussing the general state of Pakistani public schools, she tells me that TFP fellows work to build up students’ basic skills and try to bring them at par with standards at the more expensive private schools.

Their work shows. As we take a break from our conversation, a team of three girls is busy solving a particularly complex math problem involving the addition of mixed fractions. Within seconds they have the right answer. The crowd breaks into loud applause. The announcer delightfully announces ten points for the team.

Huda takes pride in pointing out that most of the participants are girls, who she says are usually not allowed to step out of their homes and communities. “This is the first time they’re getting to experience something like this,” she tells me.

Misbah Javaid, one of the main organisers of the event, takes me to a smaller hall where I can step right up to the action. I am told the participants are mostly (very smart) seventh and eighth grade students.

The announcer asks them questions both in English and Urdu. Once they have the question, participants scribble away onto sheets of paper to answer before anybody else. There is a lot of hurried consultation and lots of visible frustration when one team beats the others to the buzzer.



One question asks participants to calculate the average of 11 different numbers. The problem has me stumped, but the students from The Citizens Foundation Korangi, Adamjee Campus (TCF Adamjee), are sharper than I am. They have the answer in six seconds flat. The audience ‘oohs’; I break into applause.

By the end of the two initial rounds, Government Girls Secondary School Intelligence, Neelum Girls Secondary School, TCF Korangi Adamjee Campus and the Behbud Girls School Shirin Jinnah qualify for the final round on their aggregate scores. Everybody proceeds to the main hall for the showdown.

“We have seen how well you all performed in the academic section of this quiz,” Tooba Akhtar, the fellow conducting the final round of the quiz, says to the finalists. “But this round will test you on your IQ, which is a measure of your intellectual capacity,” she explains. She tells me later that they decided not to lower the bar for this round. They deliberately made it difficult, so that the students would feel challenged.

As the round progresses, TCF Adamjee shows that it is a cut above everybody else. When the team has a comfortable lead over the others, the team members smile at their mentor across the room. She flashes them a thumbs-up.

As final scores are announced, one team breaks down in tears. I feel for them – I have seen the three on edge throughout the tournament, fighting to secure a place in the final four. Two TFP fellows rush to console them. They are led off stage and given a pep talk. Tears are dried and composure returns. I catch one of the girls attempting to be cheerful: “So what if we lost,” she tells her teammate. “Look, we’re getting medals. I have never received a medal before!”

The results come as no surprise, given how the competition has progressed. TCF Adamjee bags two cups for excelling in English and science, as well as the big cup for winning the tournament. The Government Girls Secondary School, President House takes the award for the highest score in math questions.

Later, I round up the winning team. I ask them what this competition has been like for them. Juggling three certificates, three medals and three well-earned trophies between them, they gush with happiness as they tell me how they prepared “very hard” for the competition. Abdul Qadir boasts he studied only three days to get there. Amna Ilyas and Shazia Kanwal are more modest: they say they took two to three weeks preparing from the syllabus provided by their teachers. They tell me that this is the first such competition they have ever participated in. They want more, and they proudly tell me they are ready to take on any school in Karachi.

As I leave the victorious team to enjoy their moment, I notice a brawny young man standing to a side. I walk up to him and ask him if he knows the participants. In halting Urdu, he tells me he’s Qadir’s brother. I ask him if he feels proud of his achievement. “I am very happy. He likes to study. He studies harder than even I did,” he says.

He tells me he “catches fish”, and he does not want his brother following in his footsteps. He says he believes initiatives like these will help him secure a better future.

An all-girls team that came away empty-handed tells me they’re very unhappy they did not win. They prepared particularly hard for the English section, but the “difficult multiplication problems” got them. I ask one of the girls’ mothers what she wants her daughter to be when she grows up. She breaks into a smile: “Anything she wants to be.”

Later, Aman Foundation CEO and TFP Chairman Ahsan Jamil Jamil tells me that this whole event is about getting these children to get to know each other and to compete with others of similar academic capacities. “To showcase that learning happens in so many different ways – to showcase talent and encourage participants to believe in themselves.”

“Education is the key to a turnaround in Pakistan, and it is particularly exciting to see Pakistani women participate. You push someone down, and they only rise up higher,” he observes.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 19^th, 2013.