A nation does not fall when its buildings crumble or its coffers empty, it falls when its classrooms decay, when curiosity dies in silence, and when children are robbed of their right to learn. That is the slow death unfolding in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP). What could have been a generation’s greatest chance has been turned into its greatest betrayal. After more than twelve years of absolute power, the rulers of KP have left behind not schools of learning, but ruins of neglect, slogans in place of solutions, theatre in place of teaching and collapse in place of change.
According to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2024-25, the literacy rate in Punjab stands at 67%. In KP, it languishes at 51%. Punjab has achieved an enrolment rate of 67% for children aged 5-16, while KP manages only 39%. The dropout rate in Punjab is 13%; in KP it is an astonishing 31%. The failures of KP’s education system echo in its classrooms. The student-teacher ratio in Punjab is 22:1, close to global norms, allowing some degree of individual attention. In KP, the ratio is a staggering 45:1. A single teacher, often underpaid and demoralised, is expected to manage nearly fifty children in dilapidated rooms with leaking roofs and broken furniture. Worse, many classrooms do not even have teachers.
Ghost employment, where teachers draw salaries but never appear, has become endemic. Absenteeism corrodes the very foundation of learning. Children are left to sit in silence, or worse to drift away from school altogether.
Infrastructure tells the same story of neglect. In Punjab, 78% of schools have clean drinking water and 81% have functional toilets, still not perfect but usable. In KP, only 42% of schools provide drinking water, and barely 38% have working toilets. Imagine asking a girl to attend school daily in such conditions. Small wonder that female enrolment in KP stands at 32%, compared to Punjab’s 60%. For girls, education in KP is less a right than a gamble against social, cultural and infrastructural odds.After twelve years in power, the KP government still parades hollow reforms. Its much-trumpeted shift from annual exams to two semesters up to grade 8 is nothing more than a cosmetic fix, students fail not because tests are hard, but because classrooms are broken, teachers absent, and books outdated. Even worse is the move to outsource thousands of schools. This is not reform but surrender, a clear admission of failure in the state’s basic duty to educate. By abandoning public education to private hands, the government deepens inequality, excludes the poorest, and condemns the province to collapse.
Punjab provides a very different picture. Its incremental but consistent reforms over the past decade, teacher monitoring through technology, incentive-based promotions, and investment in school facilities have produced tangible results. The secondary school pass rate in Punjab was 78% in 2024; in KP it was only 38%. Punjab has introduced digital literacy programs, vocational training, and extracurricular activities that prepare students for the modern economy. KP by contrast, has confined its youth to rhetoric.
The anger is justified because KP’s failures are not inevitable. They are the product of deliberate negligence by a government that has governed for three consecutive terms but refuses to accept responsibility. Instead of confronting corruption, it hides behind slogans.
Instead of reforming teacher accountability, it blames exams. Instead of rebuilding schools, it experiments with outsourcing. The government has weaponised youth in rallies but abandoned them in classrooms. It is one thing to fail despite trying; it is another to never try at all.
At stake is not just KP’s future, but Pakistan’s. A province where half of school-aged children are out of school, where girls remain excluded, and where teachers are missing cannot feed into a competitive national workforce. It will fuel cycles of poverty, extremism and hopelessness. Every child denied education is not just an individual tragedy; it is a collective national wound.
The lesson from Punjab is clear: targeted investment, accountability, and political will change outcomes. The warning from KP is equally clear, populist slogans without governance destroy futures. Pakistan cannot afford another generation lost to neglect. Education is not charity, nor is it a burden to be outsourced. It is the state’s most sacred contract with its citizens. For KP, the choice is urgent, either rebuild its classrooms, hold teachers accountable, provide infrastructure, and put youth at the centre of policy or continue down the path of self-destruction. Every year wasted is not just a year lost, it is a future destroyed. The cost of failure is not measured in budgets or headlines, but in the lives of children who deserved better and never received it.
KP’s ruling party came to power promising ‘change’. A decade later, the only change visible in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is decay in governance, decay in opportunity, and decay in the very schools that should have been its lifeline. If education is the truest mirror of a government’s priorities, then KP today reflects not hope but betrayal. And betrayal, history reminds us, always comes with a cost too heavy to bear.
