Our educational institutions are operating on borrowed time. Between unexpected weather emergencies, political rallies, smog holidays, and sudden fuel shortages, it feels like our children’s schools are closed more often than they are open. Over the last few years, we have slowly normalized a reality in which a truncated academic year is just “the way things are,” while ignoring that our children are paying the ultimate price.
When authorities announce yet another closure, the default government response is to quickly declare an “online learning day.” But parents, teachers, and the students themselves know the hard truth: staring at a screen is a temporary bandage, not a viable substitute for a living, breathing classroom. We are sacrificing the foundational years of our youth to administrative convenience and crisis mismanagement.
There was a time, not so long ago, when the school calendar meant something. We all knew with absolute certainty that summer vacations started on the 5th of June and ended on the 31st of August. It was a reliable, sacrosanct schedule. Families could plan their lives, and teachers could pace their lessons. There were rarely any abrupt changes.
Today, educational planning has been hijacked by reactionary governance. Instead of a predictable calendar, parents are now accustomed to a deeply stressful evening routine. It usually happens around 10:30 PM. The house is finally quiet, the uniforms are ready for the next day, and then your phone lights up. It’s a forwarded WhatsApp message or a late-night tweet from a government official: “All schools will remain closed tomorrow.” You sigh, turn off the morning alarm, and brace yourself for another day of disrupted routines. These midnight declarations aren’t the result of careful administrative planning; they are knee-jerk panic buttons. Shutting down the educational apparatus of an entire district via a late-night social media post leaves families scrambling and teachers completely unprepared. It is simply unjustifiable.
If we are looking for where things went wrong, we have to look closely at the changing role of our District Education Departments.
Ideally, these departments are supposed to be the facilitators of our children’s futures. Their core job should be to support schools, provide resources, and fight tooth and nail to keep classroom doors open safely. Instead, they have morphed into mere controllers.
Whenever there is a hint of bad weather, a political protest, or a logistical hiccup, their immediate reflex is to pull the plug. They take the path of least resistance by forcing closures. They issue these shutdown directives with alarming frequency, yet they remain deafeningly silent on the devastating drop in educational standards caused by their decisions. When was the last time a district education department called an emergency meeting because reading and math scores were dropping? The focus has shifted entirely away from cultivating young minds to simply avoiding administrative headaches.
Education isn’t just about memorizing facts for a test; it’s a compounding process. It requires rhythm, routine, and consistency. When that rhythm is constantly broken, children don’t just pause their learning—they forget what they’ve already learned.
If you want undeniable proof that our educational standards are plummeting because syllabuses are being left woefully incomplete, look no further than the recent 10th-class (Matric) board results across Punjab and other provinces. The data is a glaring red flag. In major boards, we have recently seen overall pass percentages hovering in the mid-60s, while in several rural districts, public school pass rates crashed below 50 percent.
How can we expect a 15-year-old to pass a comprehensive board exam when their school was shut down for weeks at a time, leaving teachers to scramble and skip crucial chapters just to reach the finish line? These poor board results are not a reflection of lazy students; they are the direct, measurable consequence of stolen instructional days.
In a desperate panic to save their children’s board exams and cover the massive gaps left by school closures, parents are pouring their hard-earned money into private tuition centers and evening academies. But let’s be brutally honest: an academy is not a school.
While a tuition center might help a child rote-memorize a few past papers to barely scrape by in an exam, it offers absolutely none of the core developmental benefits of formal schooling. Academies are transaction-based learning factories. They do not provide the emotional support, the mentorship of a dedicated class teacher, or the vibrant peer interactions that shape a young adult’s character. Relying on an academy to replace a chronically closed school is like taking vitamin pills while starving yourself of real food—it might keep you standing, but it is not true nourishment.
Furthermore, treating online classes as a permanent, equal substitute for physical schooling is a dangerous illusion.
First, it ignores the digital divide. As UNICEF data consistently points out, millions of students lack access to reliable internet. In many middle-class and lower-income homes, three or four siblings are forced to share a single smartphone to attend class. For these kids, an “online school day” is just a lost day.
Second, it ignores how humans actually learn. A good teacher reads the room. They see the furrowed brow of a confused student and adjust their explanation on the fly. In a virtual environment, that magical, interactive connection is dead.
Finally, it ignores what school is actually for. Schools are micro-societies. The playground, the cafeteria, the spirited classroom debates—this is where our children learn conflict resolution, empathy, teamwork, and leadership. A screen cannot teach a child how to navigate the physical world.
We cannot keep doing this. If we want to salvage our educational standards, we need a massive shift in how we handle crises. Education must be treated as an essential service—as vital as hospitals and power grids.
Demand Facilitation, Not Just Control: We must hold our District Education Departments accountable for educational standards, not just crowd control. Their mandate must be to keep schools open, exploring every safe alternative before hitting the panic button.
Stop “Tweet Governance”: Governments need to invest in proactive solutions—like climate-resilient schools and better urban planning—instead of relying on late-night social media posts to manage a crisis.
Protect the School Zones: Political rallies and protests must be legally restricted from disrupting school routes. An adult’s right to protest should never practically infringe upon a child’s right to learn.
A nation’s greatest asset isn’t its natural resources; it’s the minds of its youth. By allowing our schools to become collateral damage to weather, politics, and lazy administration, we are willfully stunting our own progress. We can no longer afford to casually lock the gates of our schools. It’s time we put the phones down, open the classroom doors, and let our children learn.
Muhammad Anwar is a governance and development leader with over three decades of experience in public policy and institutional leadership. As CEO of Freedom Gate Prosperity, he promotes democratic values, inclusive growth, climate resilience, and youth empowerment across Pakistan.
© 2026 Created with Muhammad Anwar
