Concerns over Pakistan’s education system are not only a domestic human rights issue. They also raise wider questions for Europe about radicalisation, minority rights, migration pressures and the credibility of EU conditionality.
Pakistan’s education system has long been the subject of concern among human rights advocates, minority representatives and education reformers. The criticism is not simply that the country suffers from underfunded schools, uneven access to education or poor learning outcomes. It is that parts of the curriculum continue to reinforce a narrow definition of national identity, one closely linked to religious conformity and suspicion towards those who fall outside the dominant narrative.
That matters beyond Pakistan’s borders. For the European Union, Pakistan is not a distant or marginal case. It is a beneficiary of preferential trade access under the EU’s GSP+ scheme, which is formally linked to the implementation of international conventions on human rights, labour rights, environmental protection and good governance. The content of Pakistani classrooms therefore has a direct bearing on how Europe assesses Pakistan’s long-term direction, its treatment of minorities and its willingness to confront extremism at its roots.
At the centre of the concern is the role of education in shaping civic identity. In a healthy system, schools should encourage critical thinking, social mobility and coexistence. In Pakistan, critics argue that the opposite too often occurs. Textbooks and classroom materials have been accused of presenting religious minorities as peripheral to the national story, framing India as a permanent enemy, and merging patriotism with religious orthodoxy.
The result is not simply poor education. It is the reproduction of a worldview in which diversity is treated with suspicion and conformity is presented as a civic virtue. That is a serious problem in a country already facing sectarian violence, attacks on minorities, blasphemy-related abuses and the continuing influence of extremist networks.
Successive governments have promised reform. Yet the ideological structure of Pakistan’s education system remains deeply influenced by policies consolidated during the Zia-ul-Haq era, when Islamisation became central to state identity and school curricula. The administration of Shehbaz Sharif has not produced the kind of structural de-ideologisation that would be required to reverse this inheritance. Instead, reform has remained cautious, partial and politically constrained by the power of conservative religious actors.
The controversy surrounding the Single National Curriculum illustrates the problem. Its stated aim was to reduce inequality between different types of schools and create a common educational standard. Yet critics argue that it has also reinforced an Islamic framing of national identity, while doing too little to reflect Pakistan’s religious and cultural diversity. For Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Ahmadi and other minority communities, the issue is not abstract. It concerns whether their children can see themselves as equal citizens in the country’s official educational narrative.
There is also a security dimension. Radicalisation does not begin only in militant camps or online propaganda channels. It can begin much earlier, in environments where children are discouraged from questioning authority, where other faiths are portrayed as alien, and where historical conflict is presented as permanent and unavoidable. When education fails to build analytical skills and civic confidence, extremist narratives find easier ground.
This is especially acute in areas where formal education is weak or inaccessible. In parts of Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Afghan-Pakistani borderlands, poverty, insecurity and state absence have left families dependent on religious institutions that may be the only available form of schooling. Many madrassas provide basic instruction and social support. But where oversight is weak and curricula are narrow, the risk of ideological isolation grows.
The exclusion of girls from quality education compounds the danger. A society that leaves millions of girls without meaningful schooling is not only denying them opportunity; it is weakening its own resistance to poverty, extremism and social fragmentation. Education is one of the strongest defences against radicalisation. Its absence creates a vacuum that can be filled by militant groups, sectarian movements or political actors seeking to mobilise identity against perceived enemies.
Europe should not treat this as a remote South Asian debate. Radicalisation today travels through digital networks, diaspora communities, encrypted platforms and informal ideological ecosystems. Narratives of grievance, exclusion and religious confrontation do not remain within national borders. They circulate, adapt and find audiences among vulnerable individuals far from the places where they first emerge.
This does not mean that Pakistani diaspora communities in Europe should be viewed through a lens of suspicion. That would be both unfair and counterproductive. Most are integrated, law-abiding and contribute substantially to European societies. But it does mean that European policymakers cannot ignore the ideological content exported, amplified or normalised through transnational networks.
The EU’s engagement with Pakistan should therefore include education as a central human rights and security concern. Discussions on GSP+ compliance should not be limited to formal treaty ratification or legislative commitments. They should examine implementation, including whether school curricula promote equality before the law, religious tolerance and respect for minorities.
Pakistan’s crisis of education is also a crisis of governance. A state cannot claim to be combating extremism while allowing school materials and public narratives to sustain the assumptions on which extremism feeds. Nor can Europe credibly defend human rights conditionality while overlooking the ideological formation of future generations in a major GSP+ partner country.
The question is not whether Pakistan should abandon its religious identity. It is whether the state can build an education system in which citizenship is not restricted by faith, minorities are not treated as outsiders, and young people are taught to think rather than merely repeat. Until that happens, Pakistan’s classrooms will remain not only a domestic policy failure, but a matter of legitimate concern for Europe.
