EDUCATION SYSTEM OF PAKISTAN:

Pakistan's education system consists of 260,903 institutions and facilitates 41,018,384 students
with the assistance of 1,535,461 teachers. 180,846 public institutions and 80,057 private
institutions are included in the scheme. Consequently, 31% of educational institutions are
owned by the private sector, while 69% are public institutions.
According to the UNICEF,
Pakistan currently has the second-highest number of out-of-school children in the world
(OOSC), with an estimated 22.8 million children aged 5-16 not attending school, accounting for
44 per cent of the total population of this age group. In the 5-9 age group, 5 million children are
not enrolled in school and after primary school age, the number of OOSCs is double, with 11.4
million teenagers aged 10-14 years of age not receiving formal education.[ CITATION UNI \l
1033 ]
Pakistan is ranked 134 out of 157 countries on the Human Resource Index regarding the
standard of learning (HCI). In addition, Pakistan's standard of education is bad enough to vary
by around four years between the Expected Years of Schooling (EYS) and Learning Adjusted
Year of Schooling (LAYS). For example, by age kids in Pakistan may expect to complete 8.8 years
of pre-primary, primary and secondary school. However, it is only equal to 4.8 years when
adjusted for quality learning.
And this Corona Virus outbreak have further worsened the situation by weakening Pakistan’s
education system.

IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON EDUCATION IN PAKISTAN:

As a result of the Coronavirus, Pakistan was among the first countries in the world to institute
widespread school closures. Since the government of Pakistan placed a nationwide lockdown
on the spread of the virus on March 16, about 46 million schoolchildren were forced to stay at
home.

Impact of Covid-19 On Primary and Secondary Education in Pakistan:

Federal and provincial governments have moved rapidly to begin airing curricular content for K-
12 via television channels after the Lockdown Pakistan, provided that televisions are much
more commonly owned than radios, 62.5% of the sampled households had a TV compared to
11% who own a radio. These averages, however, mask stark disparities. For instance, children in
households in the poorest homes (only 17% of whom have TVs in their homes) in PUNJAB are
much less likely than children in the richest households to benefit from this policy initiative (95
percent of whom have access to television). The numbers for Sindh are also similar, 96 percent
of households have televisions in the top quartile, 20 percent have televisions in the bottom
quartile. In Pakistan, less than 1% of the poorest households owned a computer and 82%
owned a cell phone in which only 4% people has internet access and because of that Children
further away from cities are much less likely to have access to instructional content sent
through smart phones and aired on cable channels.
Around 4 million students appear every year in board exams conducted by 29 educational
boards across the country. This time because of the Covid-19 Pandemic The Federal
Government of Pakistan cancelled the board exams of all the secondary and higher secondary
students. Education minister announced that all the students across the country will be
promoted to the next class and this decision has a major impact on the future of our students.
For Example, students of 9th class will be promoted to 10th class without exams and it will affect
the students in such a way that he/she won’t have the knowledge about the Courses they had
to pass in the 9th standard, and according to the Pakistan’s Education Boards, subjects which are
taught in 9th class are not repeated again in the 10th class. Students of 9th standard will face huge
consequences in the future because of that and their results in the 10 th standard will also be
affected by that. The Board exams in our country are held bit differently than the normal exams
in the school so the students of 9th standard won’t have the experience of that also and they
will experience it for the first time and that too in the 10th standard where burden of subjects
are more if we compare to the 9th standard.
As announced by the Government, students who got Low marks in the 9th and 11th standard will
be awarded the same low marks in the 10th and 12th standard because exams were cancelled
and the Education boards will grant the same marks of the previous class to the students of 10 th
and 12th standard. This is injustice with the students who worked hard whole year to improve
their marks and what they got in the end is the same low marks from which they were trying to
improve.

Online Education in Pakistan Due to This Pandemic:

Because of Lockdown, online education for students was preferred by educational institutions.
Online teaching combines the use of the internet to provide study material to students in the
form of video tutorials, presentations and texts, and online learning has several benefits, such
as ease of study at home, no partiality and time restrictions, but it has more drawbacks than
advantages.

1. Physical Issues:
Studying via digital media induces a great deal of eye strain on students, most of whom suffer
from eye redness, constant eye watering, light sensitivity, insomnia, etc. In these cases, it is
always a risky choice to get material printed and may not be very open to all. College students
or those in higher education may comply with this, but students in the schools are in a rough
patch because of it. With the use of mobile phones, the eyes are most affected because the
blue light produced by the displays is responsible for upsetting the sleep cycle. Most of the
Parents are already worried about the growing eye problems among kids. High blood pressure,
diabetes, vision loss and joint problems in youngsters is associated with excessive screen use
and online education is mainly based on screen use.

2. Social Skills:
In the dispensing of information, personal teacher interaction in offline mode is more efficient
than online education and classroom teaching in terms of productivity is largely irreplaceable.
Interactions between faces create trust. Community management, leadership, communication
skills, character growth and overall personality development are triggered by sports, physical
and co-curricular activities that are totally absent in the online mode and students are getting
affected by it badly because of this pandemic.

3. Technological Aspect:
The technological aspects of online education have some significant effects on the education of
our students. Another aspect that affects competitiveness in introducing online education is
internet access in our country, as most areas in our country do not have basic internet facilities.
For example, we are in 2020 and there are still no 3g or 4g connections available in Balochistan
province and, according to government estimates, about 36 percent of Pakistani households
have broadband Internet access, but only 15.5 percent of the population used the Internet. Half
of the Sindh lacks the basic need for electricity and Half of the KPK doesn’t have good internet
services across the province and majority of students in rural areas of country do not have their
cell phones and personal computers for online classes and students do not have access to smart
phones even from their parents due to poor condition.

4. Online exams:
Online exams are the worst part of this Pandemic. In online exams students can’t be judged by
the teachers properly because online exams are the open book kind of a exam and students can
take help from the parents and siblings also and most of the students use google to answer the
questions and then they paraphrase it so teacher can’t catch them cheating through plagiarism
tool. Online exams are also difficult for some students because of the technological factors like
electricity, internet etc. Hence, student can’t be judged properly by the online exam system.

The policies of Pakistan government and Educational institutions are not reliable for all the
students in the country as most of the students who live in rural areas of our country can’t take
benefit from online education and those who can attend online cases have the issues
mentioned above. Education sector has been harmed badly by this pandemic and government
schools in the rural areas of our country can’t even provide proper education and basic
infrastructure to the students then how can they provide online education to them, also the
Teachers and Parents are affected by this pandemic as most of the Private educational
institutions fired the teachers because they can’t give them salaries and Parents were also
affected by this as the businesses and Jobs were badly harmed by the Pandemic and lots of
people lost their job and because of that they can’t afford the fees of educational institutions
and government institutions specially the secondary and primary educational institutions are
not providing any online education in this pandemic.