The Slow Collapse of Sindh's Education System

Introduction: A Crisis Beyond Literacy

Sindh’s education system is not in crisis because of lack of awareness or insufficient planning. It is in crisis because the very institutions meant to protect and nurture it have instead conspired—by negligence, corruption, or incompetence—to dismantle it. While donors talk in development jargon and government departments release glittering five-year plans, the reality in government schools and colleges is a daily spectacle of absence: of teachers, of learning, of accountability, and of shame.

The situation has now entered a farcical phase, as witnessed during the ongoing college examinations across the province. Cheating is no longer an act of desperation or rebellion. It is now institutionalized—a normalized and even expected feature of the system. What follows is a detailed, unsparing look at the structural failures of Sindh’s education policies, with a focus on secondary and higher secondary education. The figures cited are not theoretical; they come from the very agencies that continue to fail the province.

1. The Numbers Tell the Story: A Broken Infrastructure

According to the Sindh School Education Management Information System (SEMIS) 2022 report, over 22,000 government schools in the province were recorded. Of these:

Over 4,900 schools are non-functional.

6,900 schools operate with only one teacher.

More than 5,300 schools have only one room.

This is not just a failure of policy; it is a symptom of what development economist Lant Pritchett once described as "isomorphic mimicry": institutions that look like schools but do not perform like them.

The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2023 paints an equally bleak picture:

Only 37% of Grade 5 students in Sindh could read a story in Urdu/Sindhi.

Only 32% of Grade 5 students could do basic two-digit division.

When this is the baseline, the quality of graduates entering college is predictably abysmal. And yet, the colleges themselves are in no better shape.

2. The College Exam Debacle: Cheating as Structure, Not Anomaly

The 2024 Intermediate exams conducted by the Board of Intermediate Education Karachi (BIEK) and the Boards in Hyderabad, Sukkur, and Larkana have become a case study in institutional decay.

In centres across Karachi and interior Sindh, videos have surfaced of students copying from guidebooks, WhatsApp groups leaking solved papers before the exams begin, and invigilators turning a blind eye. According to an internal report leaked from the Sindh Education and Literacy Department (SELD), over 38% of examination centers in rural Sindh reported incidents of organized cheating.

The College Education Department (CED) has failed to establish effective monitoring. Insiders reveal that many supervisory roles are given out based on political patronage. In Hyderabad and Nawabshah, students reported that some invigilators sold correct answer keys at the start of the exam.

Even more troubling is the fact that this cheating is openly tolerated. The Sindh Professors and Lecturers Association (SPLA) has publicly protested against this normalization but with little result. In a press statement from April 2024, SPLA’s president accused the Boards of being "complicit in the destruction of the exam system through political appointments and administrative blackmail."

3. Government Policy: Committees Without Consequences

Successive governments in Sindh have announced grand schemes. The Sindh Education Sector Plan (SESP) 2019–2024, funded by international donors such as the World Bank and UNICEF, promised:

• School rehabilitation

• Teacher training

• Reform of the exam boards

Yet internal monitoring reports by the Reform Support Unit (RSU) show that less than 18% of allocated development funds were utilized in fiscal year 2023. The rest remain unspent, misappropriated, or lost in bureaucratic limbo.

The recent Sindh Education Foundation (SEF) initiatives to fund public-private partnerships have shown mixed results. While some community schools under SEF show improved enrollment, there is minimal regulation and no framework to assess academic outcomes.

More critically, there has been no meaningful reform of the Boards of Education, which remain dominated by bureaucrats with little stake in the quality of education. These Boards, meant to be autonomous, have become transactional bodies: their authority used to distribute influence, not enforce merit.

4. The Realpolitik of Education Appointments

In rural Sindh, teacher recruitment remains a deeply political process. A 2022 report by the Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (I-SAPS) found that nearly 60% of teaching appointments in interior Sindh involved political recommendations.

The Irrigation and Health departments have historically been considered the most corrupt in Sindh; Education now competes vigorously for that title.

Even when National Testing Service (NTS) results were introduced as a reform under World Bank pressure, local power brokers managed to bypass the merit system. Ghost teachers continue to draw salaries with the collusion of district officials. The Anti-Corruption Establishment Sindh claims to have initiated 400+ inquiries against fake appointments since 2020, but few have resulted in convictions.

5. The Urban-Rural Divide and the Elite Capture of Policy

Karachi’s elite private school system, catering to the children of bureaucrats and businessmen, exists in another universe entirely. Policymakers, whose own children study in British-curriculum schools, remain insulated from the consequences of government neglect.

Urban government colleges in Karachi and Hyderabad also suffer. Many function with outdated syllabi, underpaid visiting faculty, and an absence of laboratory or research facilities. In Government Degree College Malir, for example, science students reportedly share chemicals for basic experiments. Meanwhile, the Higher Education Commission of Sindh remains underfunded and structurally weak.

6. What the Students Say

Anecdotal evidence paints a sharper picture than any metric. In Larkana, several students interviewed by local news outlets during the April 2024 exams admitted openly: "Everyone copies. If you don’t, you’re a fool."

Their logic is difficult to fault. When cheating is so widely tolerated—by Boards, by teachers, by the police—the only punishment falls on those who try to play fair. Merit becomes a liability. The entire logic of public education is inverted.

7. The International Angle: Donors and the Development Theatre

International donors continue to fund education in Sindh. The Global Partnership for Education (GPE), UNICEF, and the World Bank have collectively disbursed over $500 million in the past decade.

Yet, much of this aid is absorbed by technical consultants, temporary training modules, and report-writing. The Sindh Education Sector Plan Implementation Grant (ESPIG) review for 2022 notes that while "institutional capacity building" targets were achieved on paper, there was little evidence of improvement at the classroom level.

Donors often measure success by inputs—number of teachers trained, number of modules developed. Outcomes, like real learning gains or exam credibility, remain unmeasured.

8. Conclusion: A Quiet Collapse

Sindh’s education system is not collapsing because of ignorance or poverty. It is collapsing because its stakeholders—from political elites to bureaucrats—are either complicit or indifferent.

Cheating in exams is not the cause of the crisis. It is its most visible symptom.

No reform will succeed until the Boards of Education are made accountable and insulated from political pressure. No classroom will function until teacher recruitment and transfer are de-politicized. And no student will learn as long as the system rewards fraud over merit.

The government of Sindh does not lack plans. It lacks honesty, enforcement, and most of all—a sense of shame.