As someone who has spent years studying how children learn and how education systems function, I have watched Pakistan’s recent pivot to remote learning with growing concern. Each time a new crisis emerges, be it a pandemic, civil unrest, or fuel shortages, the announcement is the same: schools will shift online. It is presented as a modern, forward-thinking solution. But for those of us who work within the realities of Pakistan’s education landscape, it reads differently. It reads as a policy decision made in abstraction, disconnected from the ground.
The problem is not with the concept of remote learning itself. In functioning systems, it can be a valuable tool. The problem is that in Pakistan, we are attempting to run software on hardware that cannot support it. And the ones who pay the price are the students.
The Infrastructure Deficit
Let us begin with the most basic prerequisite for digital education: connectivity. Pakistan’s internet penetration, while growing, remains deeply uneven. In urban centres, a segment of the population can access online classes. But move beyond city limits, and the picture shifts dramatically. Rural areas, where a significant majority of our children live, struggle with bandwidth so limited that streaming a video is an exercise in frustration. Add to this the reality of load-shedding and the cost of devices. For a family managing daily expenses, a smartphone for each child is not a priority; it is an impossibility.
When we announce remote learning without addressing these gaps, we are not providing education. We are providing access only to those who already have it and excluding those who do not. The gap between the privileged and the under-resourced does not shrink; it widens.
The Teacher Factor
Teachers are routinely expected to execute these digital transitions, yet the support structure for them is absent. The shift from face-to-face instruction to online pedagogy requires more than just familiarity with an app. It requires training in how to engage students remotely, how to assess understanding without a physical classroom, and how to manage the limitations of the medium. Most of our teachers have never received this training. They are asked to improvise.
This is not a failure of effort on their part. It is a failure of planning on our part. We cannot expect quality outcomes from a teaching force that has been given neither the tools nor the preparation to succeed in an entirely new mode of delivery. The result is predictable: lessons that fail to engage, students who tune out, and learning that stagnates.
The Student Experience
The most overlooked aspect of the remote learning debate is the student’s environment. A classroom provides structure, peer interaction, and a degree of accountability. A home, particularly in overcrowded conditions, provides none of these. For a child to learn effectively online, they need a quiet space, a reliable device, and adult supervision. These are not givens in many Pakistani households.
For girls in conservative communities, the closure of physical schools often means the end of their education altogether. For children in low-income families, the need to contribute to household income takes precedence over logging into a class. The assumption that students will simply adapt ignores the social and economic realities that shape their lives. Remote learning, in this context, becomes not a bridge but a barrier.
Governance Without Grounding
At the systemic level, the approach to remote learning has been fragmented. There is no national framework for digital education, no centralized platform that ensures continuity, and no mechanism to track which students are participating and which are falling through the cracks. Initiatives are often donor-driven or limited to specific districts, creating a patchwork of access rather than a coherent system. When the next crisis arrives, we start from scratch again, reinventing wheels instead of building roads.
A Realistic Path Forward
None of this is to argue that technology has no place in Pakistani education. It does. But its role must be grounded in reality. Before we can offer remote learning as a crisis response, we need to build the foundations: investment in infrastructure, device affordability programs, teacher training in digital methods, and a clear policy framework that defines how online education integrates with the existing system.
More importantly, we need to be honest about what remote learning can and cannot achieve in our context. It cannot replace the physical school. It cannot reach every child equally. And it cannot be thrown together overnight when a crisis hits. It requires sustained, deliberate effort over years, not reactive announcements over weeks.
The children who lose months of learning every time schools close are not abstractions. They are real students with real potential. If our policies continue to treat remote learning as a slogan rather than a serious undertaking, we will keep having the same conversation after every crisis, and another cohort of students will pay the price for our unreadiness.