Pakistan is facing such grave problems today that talk about changing a single education policy seems absurd. Of what importance is a policy change when we are faced with millions of children out of school and thousands of schools in ruin? Unfortunately, this is precisely where the problem lies — the priority of the government has always been to run before it can walk. This is not to say that clichés such as increasing GDP and teacher training are not important but before such measures can be taken we must focus on a few crucial baby steps.

I have realised the importance of these simple policy changes in the process of reforming the SMB Fatima Jinnah Government Girls School. Zindagi Trust obtained the transfer of management of this school from the government in 2007. It was through this transfer that we were able to bring about both administrative and academic policy changes. In this article I will present one such policy change that can be implemented overnight and that can go a long way in reforming government schools across the board.

When I first went to the SMB Fatima Jinnah Government Girls School campus, I was surprised to learn that there were eight schools functional within a single campus. I will need to explain this absurdity in more detail since most people may fail in understanding how this can even be possible. You see, there were five primary schools (class one to five) and three secondary schools (class six to 10) operational within the same school premises. So the students of class one were divided among five different schools, all of which were located in the same campus with separate teaching and administrative staff for each.

Whereas a grade one classroom had 70 students and one teacher, another had 15 students and three teachers. A teacher from one school could not substitute or help another school’s teacher. To make this setup even messier, there were eight principals in charge of a single campus.

I found this situation too incredible to believe at first. The world over, one campus is one school. A single school can be broken into primary and senior sections. But I had never heard of five different schools running within a single class level. It didn’t take me long to discover that this strange setup was in fact quite widespread. In Karachi, there are 3,625 schools but only 900 campuses. If you walk into a government school in Karachi, you will find that there are multiple “schools” operating within the school.

The first thing that Zindagi Trust did was to merge all these eight schools into a single school. One principal was chosen to head the school and three different sections — kindergarten (KG to class two), junior (class  three to six) and senior (class seven to 10) — were established. A section head was appointed to oversee each of these sections. Needless to say, this new structure made operations a lot smoother.

It is possible to resolve a huge administrative mess by merging all these redundant schools and declaring each campus as one school. This way one principal will be accountable for one campus and the education department will only have to keep track of 900 principals. Please note that this reform will not require an increase in the GDP or any sort of funding. It is only one such transformation that we have realised through our own reforming of a government school. There are many such policy changes that require not a single dollar or rupee but only political will.

The media and our policy makers repeatedly stress on clichés like increasing GDP, etc. Why doesn’t anyone talk about these policy reforms that can go such a long way? Our problem has surely become a case of putting the cart before the horse. Even if we increase our education GDP to four per cent, would it improve the education system with multiple schools and principals working within a single campus? Or while still teaching from outdated textbooks? Or by giving full salaries to teachers who happen to be regularly absent from work?

Even public-private partnerships in government schools are failing due to poor policies. NGOs are trying to do their bit but they remain helpless when it comes to government schools and as they can only do so much with their hands tied.

There are people within the government too who want change. SMB is an example of this. Whatever we have achieved could not have been possible without such people. But these people, too, need to start focusing on the real issues. When they appear as guests on television shows or talk at government platforms, they must highlight these simple fixes. They must break the psychological barrier about “more funding” being the only solution.

At SMB, we have now established a tried-and-tested model. We have implemented several policy changes in this school that have made it into a well-functioning unit. If these policy changes are implemented all over Sindh, more than half of our problems could be resolved overnight. I urge the media and the civil society to take this much-needed baby step. Let us focus on this issue of declaring one government school campus as a single school across Karachi. Let all TV show hosts focus their programmes on this one issue, let all donor organisations make this policy change a prerequisite to receiving funds, let all political parties unite to make this happen. Let us persist until we can at least make this small change happen.

To go big, we must first start small. Alas there are no shortcuts!

The writer, a singer and social worker, is president and founder of Zindagi Trust.