Foundational Learning and Other Ghost Stories
Urban Bystander
The messages were marked read. The memos were scented with resolve. The dreams were footnoted. And yet, no one replied.
And no one replies to the Minister of State for Federal Education.
Not to her calls. Not to her WhatsApp voice notes. Not to the memos sealed with ministry logos and ambition. She checks her message to the Planning Ministry, blue ticks. The voice note to Finance, marked “played.” Yet, no response. The phones in her office still ring, but it is only the echoes of her own promises bouncing back. After a meeting with the Federal Minister, in the hopeful spring of April, she had spoken with quiet conviction of a revival. A federal education budget of Rs. 215 billion had been proposed, not just numbers, but a map of reform. Schools in Gokina and Tarnol would get textbooks and toilets. Tarlai Kalan would get boundary walls and science kits. GGPS Kot Jandan would smell of fresh paint and hope. It was all there, drafted by the team at the ministry and the kind-eyed Secretary, known for carrying a worn-out pocket Constitution in one hand and SDG-4 scrolls in the other, like a bureaucratic saint.
But now, all she holds is a thin, overly optimistic briefing folder and the final number: Rs. 169 billion. Not a typo. She rechecks her notes, scrolls through April’s group chats. “Maybe they missed it,” she mutters to her PS. They didn’t. She calls again. No one picks up.
Somewhere along the meandering corridors between Education, Planning and Finance, a route now whispered as the Path of Procedural Oblivion, the budget began to vanish. Mirza Chughal Khor, the crow with a clipped wing and the ghost of a retired CSP officer trapped in his feathers, who still howls at budget sheets in his sleep, felt a chill in the ledger winds.
The first cut came quietly at the Ministry of Unspent Dreams, where ambitious plans go to retire and throw-forwards bloom like hydrangeas in a PSDP. It was here that Rs. 23 billion evaporated, slicing the proposal down to a respectable relic: Rs. 192 billion, exactly like last year, because sameness is the safest reform.
Then came the unkindest cut. Until it reached the Fiscal Forgetfulness Division at the Ministry of Vanishing Intent, where another Rs. 23 billion was cleaved in between the whisperings of budget reallocations over kebabs. Behind oak doors, in rooms faintly scented with audit reports and despair, a portly official from the Revenue Extortion and Excavation Bureau, known to cackle while chewing meat, was overheard saying: “We extract revenue and expectations. Budget lines, too, if they’re not looking.”
His giggle shook the office walls as a junior staffer Googled: “How to delete Rs. 23 billion from SAP without anyone noticing.” Some say that the cleaved 23 billion have gone rogue. A sum now chased across pink books and loops, rumoured to haunt the margins of development budgets and salad bowls alike. One junior officer from the Planning division claimed it was last seen slipping into the PSDP portal wearing a fake username.
The Finance Division denies any such misplacement. “Nothing was lost,” they assure. Only misplaced, misunderstood and mis-allocated.
But the League of Learning Oversight knows. Mirza traced the trail of the first Rs. 23 billion to the PSDP portal. “It slipped into a sub-folder marked ‘Strategic Aspirations for Resilient Asphalt,’” he muttered. “Budget line camouflaged. Paper trail perfumed.”
Nosy Mynah, the high-ranking whisperer and lead on unauthorized audits, spotted the second batch loitering near Serena Chowk’s new flyover, holding a sign: “Will Fund Concrete for Cuts.”
Babloo the Pigeon, formerly Head of Surveillance Zone-III and now serving as Chief Delivery Officer for the Ministry of Federal Education, flapped wearily. “They always choose loops over learning,” he said.
What becomes of the schools, they wonder? Everything. And nothing.
When a major slice of the education budget vanishes, the void doesn’t echo, it instructs. We now have bright intentions, converted into ghostly bullet points on PowerPoint slides.
In Mouri Syedan, toilets in schools vanish before they are ever tiled. In Tarlai, science labs fade into piles of unpoured cement. The tablets for digital learning remain stuck in the procurement verse of an unfinished poem. Foundational learning kits for literacy? Relegated to PowerPoint dreams. STEAM labs are now steamless shelves. The girls’ school in Kot Jandan is still waiting for furniture, last approved in 2022. The FDE’s monitoring team, once deployed to check on attendance, teaching quality, and school conditions, is now entirely outsourced to the League of Learning Oversights. Mirza circles the schools with a suspicious tilt. Nosy Mynah pecks through the enrolment and attendance registers. Babloo delivers notices and report summaries by wing and will. “They work for breadcrumbs,” says one senior bureaucrat. “And don’t require TA/DA. Just dignity, which, like paper, is in short supply.”
Meanwhile, the Ministry has launched a cost-effective innovation: “Thoughtbooks Not Textbooks”. A pilot quietly developed at the National Book Foundation, printed entirely in imagination. Invisible compasses are now standard issue.
As for teachers and their training? Enter SRLE: Self-Reflective Learning Experience. Designed in a dimly lit basement by retired pedagogues from erstwhile AEPAM and the Federal College of Education, this training model requires teachers to close their eyes, picture a PowerPoint, and spiritually attend a workshop where lunch is a rumour and the projector a higher power. “Transformative,” said one evaluator. “It calms the trainers.”
Up above, perched on the sun-bleached ledge of the Ministry building, the League of Learning Oversights convenes. Nosy Mynah tilts her head toward the empty school calendar flapping in the wind. “So much for the great learning leap,” she mutters. Babloo adjusts his wing, scanning the roads below. “Another day, another reappropriation. At least this one didn’t end up funding motivational banners,” he coos.
Mirza, feathers ruffled and gaze fixed on the Ministry gate, sighs, “Still, no one replies to the Minister of State for Federal Education.”
The writer can be reached at bystanderinthecity@gmail.com
