The recent outbreak of Covid-19 has seen some drastic changes being implements in the education sectors globally. One such change is the recent popularity of distant learning. Sometime back, the concept of distant learning had not taken too much importance but in the world after Covid-19, it has firmly established itself as an important step in the way forward to complete recovery. The novel coronavirus may have forced Pakistan’s schools to temporarily close, but when they re-open we can be certain that science and technology learning will be firmly back on the government’s education agenda as it seeks to build an internationally competitive knowledge economy.

Government of Pakistan, in its recognition of the importance of distant learning, has planned to launch a STEM Schools project this year. The total value of this project is envisaged at PKR 3 billion. It was announced in a recent webinar by the Federal Minister for Science and Technology, Mr Fawad Chaudhry. Speaking to the webinar on the future of distant learning in Pakistan, the minister said, “This year, we abstracted 464 schools at the federal level from all the provinces that we are turning into a STEM school. We want to take up about 5,000 government schools. We want to upgrade them as a STEM school. Digital education is the future of Pakistan.”

Initially the STEM Schools project will facilitate the distant learning for the grades 6, 7 and 8. Pakistan Science Foundation, an institute working under the ministry of Science and Technology, has been tasked with working STEM Schools project.

For a wider distribution among the masses of population, the Government of Pakistan has already launched a TV channel on school education called “Teleschool” – which reaches to around 91% of the targeted audience. While it is generally understood that it is not a replacement of face-to-face learning, the concept of distant leaning will allow schools to follow a more effective blended method of education.

[1] https://www.khaleejtimes.com/world/pakistan/pakistan-plans-rs3b-stem-sch...
[2] https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/647297-towards-a-stem-revolution