As board results roll in across the country this season, homes fill with two very different sounds: some resound with mithai and celebration, others fall into a heavy, unspoken silence. Behind every result card is a teenager who has spent months, sometimes years, bracing for this one number to define them. And the toll is real: nearly one in four school-age children in Pakistan lives with psychosocial distress, much of it rooted in exam pressure. Our education system is obsessed with grades, leaves little room for who a student actually is. Behind every anxious student checking their result at midnight is a family, a classroom, a society that has, often without meaning to, taught young people that their worth is a number.
Minahil Shahbaz
Zafarwal
