Learning What Matters in Pakistan: Rethinking Skills and Education Systems Transformation

As a member of the Network for Education Systems Transformation (NEST)—a global civil society impact network convened by the Brookings Center for Universal Education—PCE led this study in Pakistan, co-published with Brookings. It asks how Pakistan’s education system creates, or fails to create, opportunities for young people to learn what truly matters. Drawing on fieldwork across all four provinces and Islamabad, it identifies five interlocking constraints: policy and purpose, curriculum and pedagogy, assessment, governance, and resource flows. Built on the 4P framework, its recommendations call for clarifying education’s purpose, reforming teacher preparation, aligning the system behind a shared vision, and redistributing power over how learning is defined.

Key highlights/findings

Around 80% of children at late primary age cannot read and understand an age-appropriate text in Pakistan - part of a wider learning crisis across South Asia and beyond.

Opportunities to ‘learn what matters’ are constrained across five interlocking system layers: policy and purpose, curriculum and pedagogy, assessment, governance, and resource flows. No single reform can fix this - the constraints compound each other, so transformation requires action across all five layers at once.

Using the 4P framework (purpose, pedagogy, positioning, power), the study calls for clarifying education’s purpose, reforming teacher preparation, and redistributing power over how learning is defined.