I was recently at a roundtable in Karachi of industry and higher education representatives, to discuss how Pakistan’s education system can better fulfill the hiring needs of employers. During this event, a gentleman fervently asserted how the scale of Pakistan’s education crisis was just too large for traditional schooling to address, and that educational technology (edtech) was the only way to educate every child. This is not a new pipedream.

For many decades, policymakers have sought quick solutions to low student learning outcomes, by treating technology as a panacea to teaching quality woes.

However, this thinking stands in stark contrast to Pakistan’s ground reality. The 2023 Annual Status of Education Report found that 30 percent of government schools in Pakistan did not have useable furniture; 25 percent did not have an electricity connection; only 14.5 percent of elementary schools and 51.2 percent of secondary schools had computer labs; and a mere 14.2 percent of Sindh’s schools had internet. Furthermore, 24 percent of primary schools in the country were single-teacher schools, according to Pakistan Education Statistics 2023-24.

It appears that Pakistan is caught between two starkly different worlds — the age of artificial intelligence (AI) and rapid technological advancements on the one hand, and severe resource limitations on the other.

It is imprudent to fully reject the role of technology in our education system, but it is equally unwise to take a Marie Antoinette-inspired approach of decreeing that all children should have devices to educate them.

Pakistan is caught between two starkly different worlds — the age of artificial intelligence and rapid technological advancements on the one hand, and severe resource limitations on the other. Can its youth ever hope to catch up? Policymakers have long sought quick solutions to low learning outcomes for its children. But education expert Salma A. Alam argues that unthinkingly throwing money towards technology for schools is not the solution

How then should Pakistan set its education agenda, keeping the age of AI in mind, yet staying true to our indigenous constraints?

STUDENT COMPETENCIES FOR THE AI ERA

To understand this, let’s first define what the age of AI requires. To succeed in this era, school graduates need to possess far more than subject knowledge — they must be able to work with technology, solve complex problems and be independent learners in a rapidly changing world.

Dr Xiaodong Huang, an associate professor at Capital Normal University in Beijing, China, proposes the cultivation of six essential competencies within students, which focus not only on the acquisition of basic knowledge and basic skills, but also on the cultivation of the qualities necessary for the individual’s adaptation to, survival in and agency over the future society. These key competencies include:

Skill competence: students master good learning habits, and develop logical, abstract and critical thinking, and observation and analysis skills through a variety of learning tasks.

Cultural competence: students’ understanding of various cultural backgrounds and humanistic ideas.

Teamwork competence: students’ ability to foster interpersonal relationships and to communicate with students in a team.

Human-tool collaboration competence: students’ ability to recognise various tools and use them properly.

Self-learning competence: students acquire knowledge through independent analysis, exploration, practice, questioning and creation.

Cognitive competence: students’ ability to feel, perceive and represent things and the ability to judge, reason, analyse and draw conclusions.

While Dr Huang’s 2021 publication explores how AI education is an effective way to cultivate these key competencies in China, it is worth asking, especially in developing countries, if it is possible to develop at least some of these competencies in the absence of technology?

Can Pakistan cultivate these skills in our low-resourced learning environments, such that whenever our children do gain access to devices in later years, they would already have the cognitive foundation to quickly learn and advance with these technologies?

COMPETENCIES sans COMPUTERS?

It may indeed be possible to develop these competencies without technology, and I present below a few examples of how some of this can be achieved, while staying within our current constraints.

As early as grade one, students are required to recognise two-dimensional (2D) shapes (rectangle, square, circle and triangle) with respect to their characteristics. The state textbook simply illustrates the most common representation of each shape, gives an example from everyday life and then proceeds with some questions requiring the identification of given shapes.

Instead of this approach, students could be paired up and given a mix of paper cut-out triangles, rectangles, squares and circles. The shapes would vary in colour, the length of their sides and by angles (for triangles). Students would then be required to sort shapes by their properties and explain their reasoning. This approach would foster their cognitive competence (perception and classification), their skill competence (observation and reasoning) as well as their teamwork competence (collaborative discussion with peers).

In grade six, students in the social studies class are required to give examples of how the system of checks and balances limits the power of the federal government. To truly experience this system, students can be asked to roleplay the three branches of government using a variety of proposed laws — some obviously harmful, some useful and some in between. The student group representing the executive branch would propose a hypothetical law, the group representing legislature would debate and vote, and the judiciary group would then review its constitutionality.

Through this, students would understand, more deeply, why checks and balances are critically important for a democracy to function well. This activity would build students’ cognitive competence (analysing societal consequences), skill competence (critical thinking) and teamwork competence (collaborative decision-making).

In a grade four science classroom, students should be able to describe seed germination and know that seeds require water and an appropriate temperature to germinate. Instead of simply informing students about the conditions needed for seed germination, the teacher can provide each student with a jar of soil and a seed, and ask each of them to plant their seeds at home under different conditions of light, oxygen, temperature and water.

After a week or so, each student would bring their jar to class to see if their seed germinated and to reach conclusions on the conditions needed for seeds to germinate. The grade four state textbook already includes such an experiment, which fosters students’ cognitive competence (observation and inference), self-learning competence (inquiry and experimentation) and skill competence (scientific skills).

The Sindh curriculum for English language provides themes and sub-themes to guide teachers, textbook writers and material developers in choosing grade- and level-appropriate material. One such theme is festivals and cultural events. Textbook writers for grades six to eight can compose texts that go deeper than simply describing different cultures in Pakistan, to exploring more complex ideas such as stereotyping, prejudice and other cultural challenges faced in Pakistani society.

Such texts would develop students’ cultural competence (by fostering respect and understanding of diverse perspectives) and their cognitive competence (by encouraging analysis of stereotypes and prejudice, evaluating their own assumptions, and reflecting on fairness and inclusion in our society).

EQUITY IN EDUCATION BEFORE EDTECH

While all these teaching ideas can be implemented with basic resources, all of them require at least a skilled teacher and high-quality textbooks. With reforms in these two areas as a top government priority, developing countries like Pakistan may yet be able to, at least partially, ride the global AI wave.

This proposition for how developing countries may keep up in the AI age is also corroborated by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) — a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) — on students’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges.

The results from the 2015 PISA computer-based tests showed that if children have the same access to devices, the remaining differences — between socioeconomic groups, in terms of their ability to use information and communication technology (ICT) tools for learning — are largely, if not entirely, explained by the differences observed in more traditional academic abilities.

In other words, to reduce inequalities in the ability to benefit from digital tools, PISA suggests that countries need to first improve equity in education. Ensuring that every child attains a baseline level of proficiency in reading and mathematics will do more to create equal opportunities in a digital world than simply expanding or subsidising access to high-tech devices and services.

A MODEL FOR CHANGE: TEACHING TOMORROW’S TEACHERS

It is precisely this premise that has guided the vision and mission of my organisation, Durbeen. We are a non-profit that is striving to raise the standard of education in Pakistan’s government schools by staffing them with professionally qualified teacher graduates of the reformed Government Colleges of Teacher Education.

Durbeen has partnered with the government of Sindh since 2019 to take over the management of the Government Elementary College of Education (GECE), Hussainabad, Karachi, where it is offering a four-year undergraduate Bachelors in Education (B.Ed.) degree programme, to prepare teachers to teach in grades one to eight (Elementary) in government schools.

Durbeen’s focus is on elementary years for multiple reasons. First, research shows us that a good education in early years has a long-lasting impact on students’ educational outcomes in later years. Secondly, elementary years are not encumbered by board exams, which severely restrict the teaching and learning process in secondary grades. In contrast, elementary grades have much more curricular and teaching flexibility, allowing teachers to adopt the more innovative approaches described earlier.

Durbeen’s B.Ed. (Elementary) programme has been fully subsidised and students pay no fee to the college. All admitted students sign a contract wherein, in return for a full-scholarship education, they commit to teach (in a salaried job) in a government school after graduation. Hence, the core goal of our flagship project is to staff government schools with highly trained teachers who can provide a high standard of education to students from all socioeconomic classes.

Three cohorts of students have graduated from GECE Hussainabad since 2023, and all graduates have been placed as teachers in Zindagi Trust’s public schools. This transition has expanded Durbeen’s work and advocacy with the government to bring about reforms in curriculum and syllabus, so that skilled teachers have good-quality teaching and learning materials with which to improve student learning outcomes.

STRATEGIC PRIORITIES

It is, however, important to note that none of the recommendations here should take away from the need to equip Pakistani schools with the digital infrastructure necessary to compete in today’s world.

However, the unfortunate reality is that Pakistan’s cumulative education expenditure — by the federal and provincial governments — was estimated at only 0.8 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) in 2024-25. Even struggling countries like Sudan allocate a greater portion of their GDP to education.

Hence, Pakistan should certainly increase its educational spending, but only with appropriate checks and balances in place, to ensure these investments are not lost to poor governance. But even with increased GDP allocation to education, it would still be unrealistic to expect every child in every grade to have access to a device in the foreseeable future. Given its limited resources, I recommend that Pakistan should prioritise its technological investments specifically in middle and secondary schools.

There are two reasons for this focus. First, research is already showing us how premature exposure to AI in schools may actually undermine students’ cognitive capacity — weaken memory formation, problem-solving stamina and independent reasoning, particularly in younger learners — through an overreliance and misuse of AI.

There are also many ethical concerns in minors directly engaging with AI chatbots to learn about the world. Hence, the digital literacy curriculum should begin in grade six, with AI education formally being introduced in grade eight and onwards.

But even without AI, policymakers should still avoid the naive temptation to roll out devices in primary schools. Several cautionary tales are emerging around the world. In 2023, the Swedish government made a significant shift, scaling back digital devices in early grades and investing in physical textbooks and handwriting practice. This “back-to-basics” approach followed concerns and studies linking excessive screen time to declining literacy rates and concentration issues among students. Denmark, Norway, South Korea and a few others are also following a similar trend.

Second, equipping middle and/or secondary schools with computer laboratories is a more economically feasible target for Pakistan, since there are 44,426 middle and 44,942 secondary schools in the country (Pakistan Education Statistics 2023-24), comprising 40 percent of the total number of government schools.

Pakistan is caught between two stark realities — rapid technological advancements on the one hand and severe resource limitations on the other. In this scenario, it becomes all the more important to judiciously spend limited resources to ensure that we are coming as close as possible to the demands of the AI age.

Investments in professionalising the teaching workforce and re-writing state textbooks may go a longer way than making hasty or poorly planned investments in technology that run a mile wide and inch deep. Technological investments should be focused at the middle and secondary level, with strong accountability and training systems to ensure that they achieve their intended goal.

With such measures in place, we may yet be able to lay strong foundations for our children, such that, whenever they do gain access to devices, they are able to quickly learn these tools and catch up with students from developed countries.

The writer is a professionally trained primary schoolteacher and the founder and CEO of the education non-profit Durbeen

Published in Dawn, EOS, January 11th, 2026