Daily Times

While the covid-19 virus itself does not distinguish between color, caste, creed, or even gender, the response to the virus reflects the stratification and structural inequality that exists in the Pakistani society. In this article I consider the potential impact of the lockdown on our hierarchical education system and note that it will disproportionately hurt students with inadequate access to Data-connectivity, first-generation students, and adolescent girls.

In the wake of the lockdown, all schools are closed until further notice, and Board examinations (Matric, Intermediate, GCSE) postponed. While elite English-medium schools are preparing for virtual school and some of them are also handing out Chrome-books to their students, public sector and low-income private sector schools have no plans in place for virtual home-schooling. Higher Education Commission (HEC) has instructed public sector universities to prepare online lectures to mitigate any disruption in the provision of education while schools/colleges have no policies in place as yet. Even if in the near future low-income public/private schools are able to mobilize their teachers to introduce online lectures, students are expected to have access to Internet connectivity and a computer to be able to retrieve the information. One option might be cellular phones: Although according to the 2018-19 Economic Survey, 89 percent of the total population have access to cellular mobile services, Data connectivity remains a problem for many and furthermore, all households may not own a smartphone. Moreover, virtual schooling may be a viable option for older children, who can follow slideshows and online lectures, though how much they assimilate, is a separate pedagogical question. Younger primary/middle-school students require monitoring and guidance from parents while they follow virtual school and try to complete the tasks assigned by their teachers; but many of these are first-generation students and for them guidance at home may not be readily available: these students may require extra hand-holding which the State may be able to provide through public service educational broadcast on Radio and Television (TV). Perhaps the government should instruct PEMRA to assign at least one (if not a few) TV channels to air educational material for students and for older students, request distinguished lecturers to record key-note lectures and make them available publicly

Pakistan has made significant improvements in its gross enrollment ratio (GER), but retention rate at 67 percent is still low and strong disparities in terms of gender, class, and location exist. There are currently 5 million children of primary school age out of school. Once a child drops out of school she hardly ever goes back to formal education. And I fear that as students sit at home in the wake of the pandemic their momentum to study and the structure that schooling offers to their daily routine will be severed; especially our girls might fall back into their gendered roles of household maintenance, and other care work and may never be able to go back to the gender neutral task of learning.

Initial investigation of time-use data shows that school enrollment makes the lives of girls and boys more similar than if they never make it to school or drop out.  For Pakistan there exists strong evidence of gender differentiated patterns of time use, with associated gender asymmetry in work burdens (PTUS 2007 survey report).  School enrollment attenuates this gender asymmetry. School not only provides an important site of socialization away from one’s own dwelling, and provides an opportunity for children to become more autonomous it also changes the composition of activities performed by girls at home with female students spending less time on household maintenance activities than their counterparts not enrolled in school.  However, time spent on household maintenance increases with age and its our adolescent girls and young female adults that remain particularly vulnerable to this external shocks. With age the tradeoff between care-work and learning diminishes, and as schools close down and these girls are cooped up in their own dwellings they might get preoccupied with their traditional role of care-giver and in the long-run may not be able to return to school/college. This group remains the most at risk to drop out of school.

We can of course hope that the opposite occurs in a lockdown situation with boys spending more time in their own dwelling, and other helpers (such as extended family or domestic-care workers) unable to visit, the males of the household start performing more unpaid care-work. How the intrahousehold division of labor actually unfolds in the coming weeks is a moot point, but we want the government to remain cognizant of the risk this poses in terms of retention rate and devise policies to ease our children’s journey back to school.

Of course as a precautionary measure the government has no choice but to close schools and enforce lockdown, however, it is pertinent to pause and reflect on possible repercussions of this action as it is not easy to turn back the clock. To be in the physical presence of the teacher in a classroom environment is a different experience than attending online lectures at home. We need to address pedagogical issues in terms of the quality of knowledge transferred and should look at existing models such as Khan Academy and other educational apps for guidance. A lot of material is available online, and teachers do not have to reinvent the wheel. Again, as mentioned above, in terms of accessing online resources, first-generation students may require extra support. I, finally, want to conclude on a positive note, by emphsizing that in this chaos lies opportunity: and as long as we are cognizant of the risks and stand together to ensure that the provision of education continues uninterrupted despite lockdown we can emerge out of this pandemic a stronger and better informed nation.