Surely it would have made a lot more sense to get the National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC) to decide about SOPs outside examination centres earlier, instead of dismissing all pleas of all students all the while and forcing them to the centres only to find out that some of their concerns were very genuine indeed. Now everybody, students and school administrations alike, are in the danger of being caught in the one-step-forward-two-steps-back type of movement. And that is bad news for students more than anybody else because this will be yesterdays’ news soon enough for all the rest but they will have to live with the results of these exams and shape their lives and careers accordingly.
Federal Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood seems to be in the eye of the storm at least as far as popular social media is concerned. But he too could have very easily avoided this situation instead of taking hard decisions when they weren’t exactly called for. Even now, the best thing to do is to let NCOC take the decision before any more time is lost and students are burdened for no fault of theirs. Already the kind of environment that they are expected to take such important O- and A-Level examinations in is unfair, to say the least.
It cannot really be stressed enough that governments across the world must go the extra mile to give education the attention it deserves in these dark times. For, as pointed out repeatedly in this space, most things from the pandemic will come back – except the loved ones who have left us, of course – but the missed years of education will trouble entire nations for at least a generation to come. This problem is particularly pronounced in poor countries just like Pakistan, which have poor internet connectivity and outreach. That of course leaves a big majority of the student force out of the safety net that is able to leverage the online space for its learning. And such problems, in our parts of the world, lead to all sorts of things from child labour to child abuse. Such is the cost of losing schools and students in tough times. The government and the education ministry, to their credit, have held out better than most countries. But that does not mean that they can take their eye off the ball even at this late stage. *