Fact-check: Military to survey, then take over public schools in KP?

In October, a photo began circulating online that shows a letter from the education department in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa directing officials to prepare for a survey being conducted by the Pakistan Army of schools in the province. Social media posts, sharing the letter, also alleged that all public schools are being handed over to the military.

The claims are misleading.

While the letter is authentic and the army is indeed facilitating a detailed survey of government schools in the province, none of the schools are being handed over to the military.

Claim

On October 31, a post on the microblogging platform X shared a screenshot of a letter.

“Is it true? How can the Pakistan army survey schools in Pakhtunkhwa?” the user wrote. The post has been viewed nearly 3,000 times, to date.

The document shared by the user had the logo of the Education Monitoring Authority in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It was a letter sent out by the Authority to all district monitoring officers in the province.

“The Pakistan army is conducting a survey of schools in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” it read, “In this regard, the office of the DEO [district education officers] is nominated as focal point for the subject activity.”

Other users alleged that the document confirmed that all schools in the province would now be handed over to the military.

Fact

Six officials, privy to the developments, have confirmed to Geo Fact Check that the letter is indeed real, but deny that any school will be handed over to the military.

Fizza Hassan, the assistant director of coordination in the Education Monitoring Authority, who had signed off on the letter, said that it was issued on October 30 with the approval of the elementary and secondary education department.

Hassan claimed that such surveys were a “routine matter” and in “no-go areas” of the province the army had only been asked to provide security to the education officials in some areas where there was a terror risk.

“But due to the hype and the negativity attached to the letter, the survey has been dropped for now,” she said.

Another official of the Education Monitoring Authority, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, said that such a survey, known as the Annual School Census, was carried out every November in order to gather data regarding public schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, such as the number of ghost schools, teachers, classrooms etc.

“The Pakistan army will conduct the survey and the elementary and secondary education department will help them,” he explained.

The district monitoring officer in Mansehra, Javed Iqbal, said this was the “first time” that the army had taken up the task of inspecting schools in the province, explaining that due to a rise in terror attacks, there was a need for the law enforcement agency to step in.

Geo Fact Check could not independently verify the claim that the military had been assigned the survey due to security threats.

Geo Fact Check then reached out to Abdul Akram, the additional secretary at the elementary and secondary education department.

Akram said that claims about schools in the province being handed over to the military were “fake news”, but he confirmed the letter being released.

Separately, Geo Fact Check spoke to senior officials at two government high schools in the Khyber district. Both officials, who asked not to be named, rejected claims that the military plans to take control of any school in the province.

With additional reporting by Nadia Khalid.

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