Education Transformation: From Silos to Systems (Punjab)

With the Ghazali Education Foundation, PCE hosted a provincial roundtable in Lahore on Education Transformation: From Silos to Systems, gathering actors from the School Education Department, civil society, international partners, the National Youth Council, and PCE's own grassroots representatives. Led by Zehra Arshad (National Coordinator, PCE), the discussion pressed the case for quality education built around 21st-century skills, AI and digital literacy, gender-sensitive planning, and data-driven strategy, and for the political will to invest in it meaningfully. Dr. Shakeel Ahmad Bhatti, Focal Person for the Chief Minister of Punjab’s Advisory on Education, highlighted that while Pakistan’s public education spending remains below global benchmarks (14% in 2024), inefficiencies in fund utilization are equally concerning. He called for a flexible, culturally appropriate, and skills-oriented education system to serve the large population of OOSC

Panelists argued for rethinking the very purpose of education, moving beyond academics toward socio-emotional development, climate resilience, digital skills, and entrepreneurial thinking, and, with 64% of Pakistan's population young, for embedding market-relevant skills across every learning stream.

The group's key consensus areas:

• Shift to skills and competency-based education. Move teaching and assessment away from memorised content toward the competencies students can actually demonstrate and use.

• Prioritise learning that matters. Focus on the foundational and life-relevant learning that genuinely serves students, rather than racing to cover an overloaded syllabus.

• Foster holistic skill development. Develop the whole learner, cognitive, social, emotional, and practical, not just academic performance.

• Increase public investment. Raise the share of the budget going to education, since every other reform on the list depends on the money to deliver it.

• Mainstream age-appropriate skills. Embed the right skills at the right stage across the system, building from the early grades upward instead of bolting them on late.

• Integrate formal, non-formal, vocational, and entrepreneurial pathways. Connect these tracks so learners can move between them without stigma or dead ends.

The event concluded with the signing of a Declaration on Education Transformation, a united commitment to inclusive, equitable, and future-ready reform that leaves no child behind.