Due to the prolonged COVID situation, schools in Pakistan have shut down multiple times since March 2020. Some of these durations have been as long as 4 – 5 months.
Though COVID has had widespread effects on Pakistan’s education sector and it has affected different educational institutes to a varying extent but being connected with high-end private schools of Islamabad since 2014, I can tell how this impacted this specific segment of our education sector.
The overheads of elite private schools in terms of rent, teacher, and staff salaries have always been high. Initially, some schools resisted the idea of laying off teachers as they were more focused on coming up with an online alternative which could have proven to be a make or break. All high-end schools were able to relatively quickly transition to some form of online teaching. Some bought subscriptions of expensive software including Microsoft Team, which I must remind you is not a customized learning management tool and some relied on free tools including Zoom and Google Classroom.
However, given the financial strain that many parents faced due to the economic downturn, a number of students with unpaid tuition fees started to rise drastically (in some cases being as high as more than 60%).
Meanwhile, even though some edtech firms were already up and running in Pakistan before COVID but after schools’ closure, these firms became more active, ambitious with their targets, and obviously became more relevant. Secondly, exceptionally low overheads of these online teaching platforms, primarily because of revenue sharing model with teachers, these tech firms are charging as low as one-third or one-fourth of what a usual school charges.
Students were quick to join these EdTech platforms and many students genuinely enjoy their virtual learning experiences given the fact that EdTech firms are specifically targeting social and peer-to-peer learning strategies. Secondly, teachers some of whom got laid off by private schools, others now being more comfortable with online teaching, and some after seeing the success of these firms started considering online teaching firms as potential employers.
Now with millions of dollars in funding, stellar team members, highly experienced teachers, and social responsibility initiatives of some of these firms, EdTech companies are excellently suited to cater to ALL high-end private school students. (This is not a claim for public or low-fee private schools). With parents’ more awareness of these tech education solutions prevalent in Pakistan, I think we can achieve this.
Lastly, being an educationist, I would be pleased to hear your honest opinion, feedback and to take your critique on my opinions presented here.