SUMMER vacations were once declared to shield children from extreme heat. Schools still keep that calendar, yet the notification closing them makes no provision for what the monsoon now does in the same weeks. In flood-prone districts, children returning find the season written across their schools: collapsed boundary walls, flooded classrooms, infrastructure that did not survive their absence. By 26 July the National Disaster Management Authority had counted 107 deaths since the monsoon began a month earlier. Of the 97 dead in the tally issued a day before, 43 were children. Those deaths are counted. The schooling lost in the same districts is not.

Five days earlier, the Pakistan Institute of Education and the Japan International Cooperation Agency launched the Annual Statistical Report 2024-25 and the Federal Non-Formal Education Strategy 2025. A national education emergency stands declared and the Federal Secretary for Education named the first priority: 25.3 million out-of-school children. That ambition requires a policy shift, not administrative effort. Climate change removes children from school by two routes. The first is displacement, as families abandon a flood-prone district for safer ground. The second is destitution, as the water takes the crop, livestock or wage. A damaged building can be rebuilt within a season. A family pushed below subsistence cannot and the child who leaves for that reason seldom returns.

Physical damage makes both routes recur.........

© Pakistan Observer