LAHORE: Lighter school bags, textbooks that link to video lessons, and a province-wide move away from the cane: Punjab’s government schools are headed for their biggest classroom overhaul in years after Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif approved a new curriculum on Thursday.
According to an official statement issued after a special meeting chaired by the chief minister, the new curriculum is meant to cut the burden of textbooks and end the culture of rote learning. The same meeting also backed, for the first time in the province, mental health support for both teachers and students.
The meeting reviewed revised curricula for five areas: English, mathematics, social studies, Urdu and early childhood education. Officials said the volume of textbooks is expected to fall by 25 per cent.
Each new textbook will carry QR codes that students can scan to watch video lessons on the topic in front of them. The chief minister directed that printing of the new books be completed before March.
She also asked for details of an artificial intelligence curriculum for students from Class I to Class XII and said laboratories should be developed alongside it. The province had earlier made AI a compulsory school subject, and Thursday’s direction signals that officials now want the hardware in place to support it.
For the first time, Punjab will launch mental health training for teachers, the meeting agreed. It also considered appointing visiting faculty psychologists in every district, and directed the authorities concerned to arrange online counselling for students.
The move comes days after health officials held consultations on a provincial mental health policy framework for 2026–2035. Thursday’s statement did not say how many psychologists would be hired, when the online counselling service would begin, or how it would be funded.
The meeting agreed in principle to legislation to prevent corporal punishment in schools. As an alternative to physical punishment, it proposed setting up “discipline corners” in classrooms.
“An episode of physical violence can have a lifelong impact on a child,” the chief minister said, stressing the need to replace beating with more constructive discipline. No draft bill or timeline for tabling it in the Punjab Assembly was announced.
Saturdays will be dedicated to teacher training across Punjab, the meeting agreed. The authors of the new textbooks will themselves conduct the training sessions, officials told the meeting.
The chief minister was informed that English-language training has been completed for 35,000 teachers in 31 tehsils of 12 districts. She said digital literacy was also being promoted in schools across the province.
“There is no shortage of resources, but wastage of resources must now be stopped,” Maryam Nawaz said. She said she wanted an effective educational model in government schools and called for greater focus on primary schools to strengthen the foundations of learning.
The remarks follow her recent action over poor Class IX results in government schools and the release of Rs37 billion for the School Education Department. They also echo her Literacy Day pledge to focus on skills rather than reading alone.
The official statement said the meeting was briefed on the Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board (PECTA). Several other outlets, including The Nation and Dunya News, identified the body that gave the briefing as the Punjab Education Curriculum, Training and Assessment Authority (PECTAA).
The real test will come in the months ahead. The new textbooks must be printed and delivered before March, and teachers will need training in both the new content and the new approach to discipline. Parents will want to see whether a 25% cut in textbook volume actually shows up in lighter school bags. And the promised corporal punishment law still has to be drafted and passed by the provincial legislature.
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