🌿 اسڪول بند ٿيندا — پر سکڻ بند نه ٿيڻ گهرجي. هي ٻه مهينا توهان جي ٻار جي زندگي بدلائي سگهن ٿا.
🌿 اسکول بند ہوں گے — لیکن سیکھنا بند نہیں ہونا چاہیے۔ یہ دو مہینے آپ کے بچے کی زندگی بدل سکتے ہیں۔
🌿 Schools will close — but learning must not. These two months can change your child's future.
On June 1, every school in Sindh will close its gates for two months.
For some children, this will be a time of rest, play, and family. For others — and this is the truth no one wants to say out loud — it will be two months of falling behind. Two months of forgetting what was learned. Two months that quietly widen the gap between children who have support at home and children who do not.
After thirty years in Sindh's classrooms, I have seen it happen every single year. The child who came back in August having read nothing, practiced nothing, engaged with nothing academic for sixty days. And the child who came back sharper, more confident, ready — because someone at home made the decision that summer was not a pause, but a chance.
This post is for the parents who want to be that someone.
Why Summer Learning Loss Is Real
Research from around the world — and common sense from any experienced teacher — confirms what we already know: children who do not engage with learning over long holidays lose ground. Reading skills slip. Mathematical confidence fades. The habit of sitting, thinking, and working quietly takes weeks to rebuild.
In Pakistan, where the school year is already shorter than international standards, a two-month gap is significant. In Sindh, where many children come from homes where parents did not have the opportunity to complete their own education, the summer break can quietly undo months of hard work.
This is not the child's fault. It is not even the holiday's fault. It is simply what happens when we treat learning as something that only happens inside school walls.
The Good News
The good news is that summer learning does not require a tutor, an expensive program, or hours at a desk. It requires intention, consistency, and the understanding that learning happens everywhere — in a kitchen, on a rooftop, in a garden, in a conversation.
Here is what I tell every parent who asks me:
1. Read Together Every Day — Even for Ten Minutes
Reading is the single most powerful thing a child can do over the summer. It does not matter what they read — a story, a newspaper, a magazine, a religious text. What matters is that they read, that someone listens, and that words remain alive in their mind.
If your child is not yet confident reading alone, read to them. Let them hear language, ask questions, tell you what they understood. Ten minutes every day for sixty days is six hundred minutes of reading. That is more than most children get in a school term.
2. Let Them Write — Even If It Is Just a Diary
A child who writes every day during summer returns to school with a skill that their classmates will not have. It does not have to be long. One paragraph about what happened today. A description of something they saw. A letter to a relative they miss.
Writing builds thinking. Thinking builds confidence. Confidence builds everything else.
3. Make Mathematics Part of Daily Life
Mathematics is everywhere in a home. Cooking — how many cups of rice for four people? Shopping — if one kilo costs this much, how much do two cost? Time — if we leave at 3 and it takes 45 minutes, when do we arrive?
Children who see mathematics as a living, useful thing — not a set of sums on a page — develop a relationship with numbers that lasts a lifetime.
4. Talk to Your Child About Sindh
Summer is the perfect time to give your child something no school curriculum currently offers — a deep, proud knowledge of where they come from.
Tell them about the Indus River. Tell them about Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai and why his poetry still matters. Show them ajrak and explain its patterns. Take them to a historic site if you can. Tell them stories your own parents told you.
A child who knows their roots can reach anywhere.
5. Limit Screens — But Do Not Fear Technology
This is not a lecture against phones and screens. Technology, used well, is a remarkable learning tool. YouTube has documentaries. Apps teach mathematics and languages. Podcasts open worlds.
But unmanaged screen time — hours of scrolling, passive watching, gaming without purpose — quietly empties the mind. Set limits. Make technology a reward, not a default.
Two hours of purposeful screen time is learning. Six hours of passive scrolling is not.
6. Keep a Routine — Even a Loose One
Children flourish with structure. It does not need to be a rigid school timetable. But a morning that has shape — wake up, breakfast, one hour of reading or study, then free time — gives the day meaning.
Children without any routine in summer drift. They wake late, sleep late, and arrive at August with sixty days of blur behind them.
A Note on Children Who Are Already Behind
If your child struggled this past school year — if reading is hard, if mathematics is difficult, if confidence is low — summer is not a time to push harder. It is a time to rebuild gently.
Read easy books together. Play number games. Have conversations. Rebuild the love of learning before rebuilding the skills. A child who arrives in August loving school is worth far more than a child who arrives exhausted by it.
A Note to Families in Rural Sindh
I know that for many families, especially in interior Sindh, summer is also a time of agricultural work, of heat, of hardship. I know that asking a mother who is managing a household in forty-five degree heat to also supervise learning feels like one thing too many.
I am not asking for perfection. I am asking for ten minutes. Ten minutes of reading. Ten minutes of conversation about something meaningful. Ten minutes that say to your child: your mind matters, even when school is closed.
That is enough. That is more than enough.
What Every Parent Can Do — Starting Today
Before June 1, do three things:
First, find three books at your child's reading level — in Sindhi, Urdu, or English, whichever they are most comfortable in. A bookshop, a library, a neighbour, a relative — books are everywhere if we look.
Second, decide on a daily time for reading. Morning is best. Twenty minutes after breakfast, before the heat of the day arrives.
Third, tell your child that this summer is different. That this summer, they are going to come back to school in August knowing more, not less. Children rise to expectations. Give them one worth rising to.
"The school closes its gates — but the mind never should." — Razia Solangi
🌿 اسڪول جا دروازا بند ٿين ٿا — پر ذهن جا دروازا ڪڏهن به بند نه ٿيڻ گهرجن. 🌿
اسکول کے دروازے بند ہوتے ہیں — لیکن ذہن کے دروازے کبھی بند نہیں ہونے چاہئیں۔
🌿 The school closes its gates — but the mind never should.