Sindh, the province already struggling with one of the lowest literacy rates in Pakistan, particularly in its rural heartland, has witnessed a troubling chapter in its education sector. For decades, the Pakistan Peoples Party has ruled the province, promising uplift for the poor and marginalised. Yet, rather than working out comprehensive strategies to bring millions of out-of-school children into classrooms, its government took the controversial step of closing thousands of schools — a move that critics describe as apathy, indifference, and incompetence in dealing with a crisis that needed urgent attention.
In September 2021, the provincial Education Department informed the Sindh Assembly that nearly 7,000 so-called “non-viable” government schools would be shut down. The justification given was that these institutions were in areas where demand was low, where school buildings were in disrepair, or where one-room primaries were being forced to teach multiple grades at once. The announcement drew sharp criticism from opposition benches, who argued that the government should have rehabilitated these schools, ensured teacher availability, and attracted children from underserved villages, instead of shutting the doors on poor families with few alternatives. Haleem Adil Shaikh of PTI called it “a direct assault on the right to education for Sindh’s rural poor”.
But the narrative of closures was more complicated than the government first admitted. In the Sindh High Court, officials confessed that many of the closures had little to do with student numbers. Instead, schools were shuttered because they had no teachers or because their buildings were unsafe for use. In 2021, the court was told that 6,866 schools were closed due to lack of teachers, while another 7,974 were deemed “unviable”. By 2024, the number of teacherless schools was still over 2,700, though the government claimed that 540 viable schools had been reopened during the interim.
For parents in rural Sindh, the closures were more than just a statistic. In a dusty village outside Khairpur, forty-year-old farmer Ghulam Nabi lamented, “Our children now walk three kilometres to the next village. When it rains, they don’t go at all. The government may say this school was empty, but my son studied there every day until they locked the gate.” For families who depend on seasonal labour, sending children to distant schools often becomes impossible, leading to higher dropout rates.
Teachers too felt abandoned. A primary schoolteacher from Dadu, requesting anonymity, described her frustration: “We had thirty children, but no electricity, no water, and only one broken blackboard. Instead of fixing the building and posting another teacher, they declared the school useless. It is easier for them to call it ‘non-viable’ than to admit failure.”
What makes the closure of these schools so regrettable is the scale of need across Sindh. The province has around 41,000 public schools, most of them in rural districts, with enrolment topping 5.2 million children. Yet, access is deceptive. According to the Annual Status of Education Report, in rural Sindh, only 39 per cent of class 5 children can read a story in their mother tongue, just 22pc can read a simple English sentence, and barely 27pc can solve a two-digit division problem. These figures expose a learning crisis that cannot be solved by locking up classrooms, however under-resourced they may be.
Facilities — or the lack of them — are another crippling factor. In village schools across Sindh, fewer than half have clean drinking water or toilets. Only about 45pc have electricity, and many have no boundary walls, making safety and security a challenge. For girls, these gaps are devastating. In communities where cultural barriers already make it difficult for families to send daughters to school, the absence of basic facilities like toilets or secure perimeters often leads to permanent dropouts. “My daughter stopped going because the school had no toilet,” explained Zahida, a mother of three from Umerkot. “When they closed the school altogether, it felt like the government had closed the door on her future too.”
This is why the closures have been received with such frustration. Rather than investing in improving facilities, training teachers, or mobilising out-of-school children, the government preferred to label schools “non-viable” and take them off the books. It was easier to classify them as dead weight than to undertake the systemic reforms needed to revive them. Critics point out that this attitude reflects the broader governance style of the provincial leadership, where problems are managed through shortcuts rather than resolved through policy and planning.
To its credit, the government eventually attempted to reverse some of the damage. In mid-2024, education authorities announced that nearly 2,889 previously closed schools had been reopened, largely thanks to the recruitment and placement of over 2,500 new teachers. The Teachers Placement Committee, formed to address chronic teacher shortages, became instrumental in these reopenings. Still, hundreds of schools remain shuttered, caught in legal disputes or left in limbo because no serious effort has been made to restore their facilities.
The larger context makes these failures even more glaring. The 2022 floods devastated Sindh more than any other province, washing away entire school buildings or converting them into makeshift shelters for displaced families. The damage to infrastructure was catastrophic, and years later many children are still studying under tents or in unsafe structures. For the government to close schools against this backdrop, instead of prioritising rebuilding, struck many observers as a tragic miscalculation.
Civil society activists argue that these closures represent a betrayal of children in rural Sindh. “We don’t have a shortage of children, we have a shortage of commitment,” said education campaigner Amar Sindhu. “Every closed school means another generation left behind, especially in the poorest districts.”
Supporters of the policy insist that consolidating “ghost schools” and redirecting resources to viable institutions was a practical necessity. They argue that one-room schools with no teachers and no students were a waste of funds, and that the government had to focus on strengthening functional schools instead. Yet the evidence shows that many of these closed schools did have students — what they lacked were teachers, buildings, and basic facilities. In other words, the state’s absence created the very conditions it then used as justification to walk away.
Sindh’s experience highlights the profound disconnect between governance and ground realities. While policy documents speak of access, equity, and quality, the lived experience of children in rural Sindh tells a different story — of empty classrooms, missing teachers, and locked school gates. The reopening of nearly 2,900 schools last year offers a faint glimmer of hope, but without sustained investment, transparent recruitment, and a serious commitment to education, this cycle of closure and reopening will continue.
For children in Sindh’s rural districts, education is not just a policy issue; it is their only lifeline to a better future. Every closed school is not just a shuttered building, but a broken promise — a reminder that while politics churn in Karachi, the fate of millions of poor children in the province remains tied to the indifference of those in power.