December 14, 2025
When public schools in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa received their English question papers for the first semester exams on December 12, chaos broke out. The idea of setting two semester exams in one academic year was recently introduced by the Elementary and Secondary Education Department in order to ease the burden of students. But what happened seems to be pointing towards more of a problematic situation.
Confusion broke out when the clumsily crafted exam papers using AI, were distributed to the eager students: the Grade 8 English paper carried the questions of Grades 7 and 9; many questions instructed the students to summarize a text, or to identify a simile or hyperbole in a poem, but the text and the poem were missing.
In Grade 7, one question instructed to find the type of figurative language in each sentence. The problem? The sentences were missing.
In the examination halls, there was commotion and hubbub as students kept raising their hands to call their teachers and seek guidance. Teachers were themselves perplexed as the Directorate of Curriculum and Teacher Education had shared the papers but they had not set the examination this time.
Principals from the various schools’ began calling the higher-ups but there was little response as the phone calls rang through but only a few calls were answered. In response to their questions, the school administrators were reprimanded for lacking insight to see that the summary text and poems were elided to assess the students’ creativity and ease their exam stress.
This is not an aberration but part of a deeper crisis in the province’s education system. Around 5 million children aged 5-16 are not enrolled in schools in KP. A large number of those who go to school cannot read a simple text by age 10. Content-heavy syllabi, (a Grade 6 student carries 11 books in her bag), out-dated assessment methods, poor teacher training, and lack of facilities at schools, have plagued the public education sector for decades.
The problem of flawed assessment is not limited to just the English exam. Most of the students even flunk the papers in their mother languages. For instance, Pashto and Hindko are taught in KP schools but the native speakers cannot pass the exams. Not because they lack language skills, but the paper is set in a way to pass only rote learners.
A few months ago, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Elementary and Secondary Education introduced School-Based Assessment to overcome the issues of substandard assessments and ease the academic burden by introducing two semesters. The Directorate of Curriculum and Teacher Education was instructed to set papers and share it with school administrators through links.
This is not the first time the KP’s PTI government has embarked on grand schemes to overhaul the education system. It is only hoped that this could be the last time it fails millions of children and pushes them out of school.
Policy documents, circulars, and reforms continue to circulate. But a ring does not make it right. The Education Ministry resembles a child on a rocking-horse, always in motion, always at work, yet going nowhere.