Education World Forum 2024: A View from Pakistan

*Pakistan Delegation at Education World Forum 2024*

The Education World Forum - the largest congregation of education ministers in the world - concluded last week. The Pakistan Foundational Learning Hub had the honour of accompanying a large Pakistani delegation of 20+ education ministers and senior civil servants from across Pakistan, and of supporting the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training and Minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui Sb.

Here’s a few quick reflections…

Main conference highlights

Increasing focus on climate change and education, with strong leadership on this area from the World Bank. Great to meet Global Education Lead Luis Benveniste - look out for their major report on this in September. Yet, discussion around education and climate still focuses on curriculum! Surely we don't need to tell the generation of Greta Thunberg about the urgency of climate change! Instead we need to learn from their urgency and realise that climate means school closures, huge floods, extreme heat, and poses an existential threat to any education at all.
Big focus on AI and education. AI is a major area and clearly ‘trending’. But as EdTech Hub’s Director Verna Lalbharie mentioned, ‘how do we separate the substance from the noise?’ Maybe we can learn from the hype and the reality around using tech during Covid-19?
Movement on foundational learning, especially in Africa. Inspiring message from Dr. Obiageli "Oby" Ezekwesili, leading the Human Capital Africa project to focus on FLN. Evidence matters she said: ‘In God We Trust, but everyone else must bring their data’! Great to sit down with Global Education Monitoring Report Director Manon Antoninis and discuss the 2024 Spotlight Report on FLN in Africa.

Interesting to hear more discussion on ‘overload’, about children who are taught too much, curriculums that are too heavy, children pressured too much, and have too much information coming at them through technology. A highlight was hearing from Olli-Pekka Heinonen, of the IB (former education minister in Finland). Refreshingly he suggested we should teach children less not more, noting the 'information overload' in our schools, as well as showing the need for students to 'connect the dots' between subjects rather than specialising.

Pakistan Delegation Highlights

Excellent speech by Pakistan’s Federal Minister, who told the story of the 2022 floods devastating education in South Punjab and Sindh. This grounded the discussion on the bitter realities of countries vulnerable to climate change, and how their education systems are under threat.
Minister of Education, Punjab, Rana Sikander Hayat gave a great speech as part of the Ministerial Exchange focussing on learning through communities and networks.
The delegation met the inspiring Mayor of Sobral Ivo Gomes who discussed the amazing story of turning around his entire municipality, one of Brazil’s poorest, into an example of quality education. Learn more about this story here.
Evidence in education took centre stage as the delegation met experts from the FCDO’s newly launched What Works Hub, and talked to other ministries that had launched embedded education evidence labs - ‘EdLabs’ - around the world. Great to see that the work of the Pakistan Foundational Learning Hub & Pakistan Institute of Education is part of a broader movement for education evidence in policymaking. Read more about EdLabs here.
Ministers and Secretaries met the Google team at their London office, and discussed exciting future partnerships ahead of Google’s June Pakistan visit. A highlight was a demo of Google’s AI tool - Gemini - that can be programmed to create teacher lesson plans in Urdu!
Secretary Education Punjab & Director General PIE, FCDO and PFL Hub teams headed to Oxford for a day of discussions around Evidence and Data in Education, led by the What Works Hub team at the Blavatnik School of Government.
Meanwhile the Ministers and Secretaries met with tireless campaigner Malala Yousafzai, following her recent letter to the Prime Minister urging action to tackle the out of school children crisis.