Social Implications of Pakistan’s Single National Curriculum: Fostering Social Cohesion or Conflict?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55737/tk/v5i1.51138Keywords:
Single National Curriculum, Pakistan, Social Cohesion, Educational Policy, Identity Politics, Religious Minorities, FederalismAbstract
This paper aims to discuss the policy of the Single National Curriculum (SNC) in Pakistan from a sociological perspective, analyzing whether the policy is a tool to promote social cohesion or unintentionally serves to sustain existing social rifts within society. The SNC was introduced in 2020 and is a drastic change to the historically fragmented Pakistani educational environment that scholars have described as an educational apartheid perpetuating ideology- and socioeconomic class-based segregation (Jihad & Jinan, 2026). It is based on recent empirical evidence, policy analysis, and theory in sociology of education to suggest that the top-down, assimilationist strategy of SNC, which is typified by instrumentalization of religion and standardization of curriculum, is of little use and even counterproductive. It has been indicated that the policy promotes ethno-nationalist opposition, increased sectarianism, gender discrimination, and constitutional doubt over federal-provincial power after the 18th Amendment (Jihad and Jinan, 2026; Asghar, 2026). The research findings suggest a different integrative model that would fit the pluralistic identities of Pakistan and tackle the structural inequalities that continue to perpetuate educational disparity.
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