Beyond brick and mortar

It's indeed good news. The Sindh government, per the Chief Minister, has almost completed the construction, rehabilitation or upgradation of as many as 838 schools with plans underway to launch a massive enrollment drive targeting 250,000 students. This offers a rare glimmer of hope for the province's embattled education sector. As the CM himself noted, while brick-and-mortar investments are commendable, the true gauge of educational progress lies not in the concrete poured, but in the children enrolled and retained. The scale of the challenge ahead cannot be overemphasised: out of Pakistan's 26.2 million out-of-school children, a staggering 7.4 million reside in Sindh alone. If these new structures are to become beacons of actual learning, the government must ensure an enabling environment for learning. Introducing 250,000 students to these classrooms requires a dual approach: a targeted, urgent enrollment campaign and an aggressive retention strategy. First, the enrollment drive must go straight to the doorstep. The government should partner with local lady health workers, civil society groups and community leaders to find and register out-of-school children. To incentivise poor families, the government must expand targeted conditional cash transfers and provide free school transport. Second, getting children through the door is only half the battle; keeping them there is the real measure of success. The government must recruit qualified teachers and ensure basic facilities like toilets, clean drinking water and electricity. While this infrastructure is a vital first step, much more remains to be done. Only by cultivating community trust, offering financial incentives and ensuring strict institutional accountability can Sindh hope to bring 250,000 children back to school.