Reimagining Education: Youth Voices for Systemic Change

PCE organised a dialogue at Ziauddin School that brought together students from across Karachi to speak for themselves. They advocated passionately for equal education opportunity, for the recognition of individual talents, for continuous mentorship from teachers, and for genuinely enabling learning environments where every student can find their footing. Much of the conversation pushed back on the overreliance on rote memorisation, with students calling instead for creativity, critical thinking, and digital literacy, and for outdated textbooks and assessment systems to be replaced with a modern, inclusive, skills-based approach that actually prepares them for the world they are entering.

A large part of the discussion turned on the country's parallel education systems, and how hard they are to move between. Students described the jarring paradox of transitioning across the various streams of education (Matriculation, O/A levels). Each stream, they explained, comes with a different curriculum, language of instruction, and set of expectations, and these divides entrench inequality and unequal access to opportunity from the very start of a child's education.

Students also spoke at length about the skills they actually want to learn and what matters most to them, from digital and practical, real-world skills to critical thinking and the abilities they feel their futures will demand, rather than the theory-heavy content they are tested on now. For many, the most striking part was simply being asked: several said it was the first time they had ever been consulted on their own education and invited to give feedback on what they want from it, and they valued the opportunity deeply.