n large public systems, the hardest thing to hold onto is proximity: staying close enough to the people you serve that outcomes don’t turn into abstractions. Large systems create distance by default. They insert layers of procedures and protocols that are often necessary for control, but costly in terms of clarity. You can be surrounded by activity and still be far from the people the activity is supposed to serve. In education, the people the system is supposed to serve—students—often appear only as numbers.

That is why the September 2025 gathering at the historic Punjab Assembly was important. A group of schoolgirls—most from Classes 8-12—were in the room with policymakers and Education Department officials, speaking in their own words about school. The Provincial Assembly is not where you expect to hear a student argue a point or challenge an assumption. But that was what happened. About sixty-two girls sat in that chamber and spoke with a confidence that surprised many.

The dialogue was organised under HERizon—an initiative by YouthTube, a youth-focused development and media consulting firm, in partnership with Malala Fund and in coordination with the Punjab Education, Curriculum, Training and Assessment Authority and the School Education Department that focused on strengthening female educational leadership through the establishment of a Punjab Female Head-teachers’ Network and creating working linkages between school-level realities and higher governance layers.

I was there in two capacities. First, as the person who, in collaboration with YouthTube CEO Iqbal Haider Butt, designed the project proposal and core framework. Second, as a guidance counsellor, I delivered a session about how students can translate skills into opportunities. I listened to what the students thought they could realistically aim for—and what they felt was blocking them.

One of the students raised concern about traffic safety on the way to school: the girls had to cross the Ferozepur Road every day to reach their campus. The issue prompted follow-up action: a pedestrian bridge is now under construction. What made it more than a “point raised” was that it didn’t stay in the room: the relevant district education officer (DEO) followed up, and the school’s head-teacher helped keep it alive. The student’s voice provided the spark, but the follow-through depended on the layers in between. This is the kind of linkage HERizon is meant to make possible.

The basic premise is no mystery: girls’ education in the Punjab is shaped by decisions made at many levels, but women educators—the people leading girls’ schools and living closest to the problems—often lack organised networks and influence in the system. Head-teachers in girls’ schools are not secondary actors in this ecosystem. They are the first to absorb the impact of policy decisions —whether those decisions concern staffing, infrastructure, safety or curriculum. They are also close to the girls those decisions ultimately affect. When leaders at that level are isolated, issues stay local, recurring patterns remain invisible and the system keeps reacting late rather than responding promptly.

The project’s target is school leadership, but the point of strengthening the head-teachers’ hand is not head-teachers; it is students. HERizon’s central bet is not that one training or one event will change outcomes for girls. The bet is structural: if headmistresses and women school leaders are organised into functioning platforms, connected upward to district and provincial actors, and equipped to use the levers that already exist in the system, school-level conditions start to change in ways that matter for students —attendance, retention, safety, parent trust and learning environment. The point is not to replace government responsibility. The point is to support the system’s responsiveness by strengthening the layer that works closest to girls’ day-to-day schooling.

Coordinating with schools and students across a province as dense and complex as the Punjab requires functioning linkages, real cooperation and people who can mobilise on schedule.

In the design phase we were looking for an existing foundation: a natural place to start. We could then strengthen what existed and link it to a provincial structure strong enough to be recognised and listened to. Implementation quickly revealed the gap between existence and function. In many places, the associations hadn’t matured beyond WhatsApp groups—connected, but not organised through shared agendas or mechanisms that translate discussion into action. The gap wasn’t about [bad] intentions; it was about organisational capacity and follow-through.

That discovery shaped the project’s first major pivot. Instead of assuming that a functional platform existed, the work shifted toward building one that could actually function. This is where institutional partnership could impact the sustainability of the intervention. HERizon began in coordination with the SED and was formally launched with the PECTAA.

Ultimately, the PFHN was formed. It was a provincial network bringing together 45 female head-teachers, CEOs, DEOs and AEOs, representing 26 districts across the Punjab.

In practice, network-building changes how problems travel. An isolated head-teacher’s request is easy to dismiss as a weakness at an individual school; a pattern emerging across districts is harder to ignore. A network also creates peer learning in terms of how to engage communities, how to run a school under constraints and how to mobilise existing structures.

HERizon paired platform-building with capability-building. A training manual was developed and formally approved by the PECTAA. It is now used in official government trainings. The focus, in addition to building leadership skills, was on helping head-teachers recognise the existing levers and how to use them.

The head-teachers launched social media pages for their schools to showcase achievements and engage communities. In many communities, this made the schools legible to parents and other stakeholders, supporting enrolment and retention.

Meanwhile, HERizon scaled its public-facing communication through radio, podcasts, digital reels and forum coverage. It showed that visibility makes neglect harder, mobilisation easier and follow-through more likely.

The policy dialogue at the Provincial Assembly was titled: Girls’ Vision for Education. But an event is not a model unless it can scale.

On January 24, HERizon organised the first Girls’ Education Fest with the PECTAA, engaging 105 schools from 30 districts. Minister for Education Rana Sikandar Hayat attended and announced Rs 300,000 prizes from his own pocket.

Just as the Assembly dialogue had showed proximity in a high-stakes governance space, the Fest demonstrated proximity at scale: schools, students and the system gathering around girls’ voice as a legitimate public event. The students were not treated as a decoration. They were the speakers, the performers and the ones putting forth their language and concerns.

The Fest was evidence of something more basic than celebration: organisational capacity. Coordinating with schools and students across a province as dense and complex as the Punjab requires functioning linkages, real cooperation and people who can mobilise on schedule. Had the PFHN and the linkages been nominal, an event of this scale would collapse under its own logistics.

The project outputs—the PFHN, the institutionalised training and student-facing convenings—are parts a single governance hypothesis: girls’ education is shaped not only by household factors or curriculum debates, but also by whether the leaders in girls’ schools are heard, organise and act; and whether girls themselves can speak in ways the system has to take seriously.

The writer is a Lahore-based educational counsellor, teacher and researcher. He can be contacted at [email protected]