Sindh Education Crisis.

The learning dilemma in Pakistan has been long standing and subject to many crises. The pandemic already increased the number of 22.4 million out-of-school children in Pakistan and this number is bound to grow. In Sindh, the floods have impacted significant learning infrastructure. The Sindh provincial assembly was informed on Tuesday that as many as over 56,000 teachers attended only one or two days of school in a month. This habitual absenteeism is alarming and warrants a deeper dive into the learning crisis in Sindh.

While 1,324 teachers have been terminated for absenteeism and others given minor penalties, the issue is staggering. Already, 50 percent of students were out of school and around 19,000 schools have been damaged by the floods. Again, these numbers are reported estimates and it bears mentioning that the scale of the issue will be higher on the ground. While an electronic attendance mechanism is being worked on and is in the middle of a pilot, it seems that the issue is still not realized for its emergent nature.

A lot of time was lost in children's education and learning during the pandemic. The problem of ghost schools, the increase in out-of-school children and...