From School Catchments to System Change

Why the Geography of Everyday Life Matters for National Development

Introduction

Poverty, inequality, education, health, mobility, household costs, environmental conditions, and economic opportunity are often discussed as separate problems.

But people do not experience them separately. They experience them through the geography of everyday life: where they live, where their children go to school, how far they travel, which services are nearby, how much time and money are spent moving between places, who they interact with, and what opportunities are realistically accessible to them. This raises a broader question:

Could some persistent development challenges be addressed not only by providing more services, but by changing the spatial organization through which people access those services?

This article proposes education and, in particular, the organization of primary (up to elementary level) education around clearly defined neighborhood school catchments, as a starting point for investigating that question. The proposition is deliberately larger than reducing the distance a child travels to school.

It is about whether a geographically organized system of equitable access to essential services could change patterns of opportunity across households, communities, and cities.

The answer is not assumed. The question is.

Education as the Entry Point

A School Is More Than a Place for Education

Consider two children living in the same neighborhood.

Their families may differ substantially in income, occupation, education, social status, or access to resources. Yet geographically, they may live only a few streets apart.

Their educational lives, however, may be organized in completely different ways.

One child may attend a nearby government school. Another may travel several kilometres to a private school. Another may attend a religious institution. Another may be transported across the city because the family believes that a particular school offers better opportunities.

These choices are understandable. Parents want the best possible education for their children.

But there is another question worth asking:

What happens to a society when children who live together are systematically educated apart?

A neighborhood school organized around a defined geographic catchment could create a different kind of institution.

Children from different household backgrounds would share a common educational environment because they live in the same community—not because their families have the same income, occupation, or social position.

The school could therefore become more than a place where children receive instruction.

It could become a shared community institution.

Whether that produces greater social interaction, understanding, trust, social cohesion, or other benefits is an empirical question.

But it is a question worth studying.

Pakistan's Education Ecosystem

Pakistan does not have a single education system.

Government schools, private schools, religious institutions, nonprofit organizations, alternative learning programmes, and specialized educational providers all form part of the country's education landscape.

The proposal is not to eliminate these sectors.

Instead, it asks whether their roles could be examined differently within a geographically organized basic education system.

One possible scenario for investigation would be a strong, accessible neighborhood-based foundation for primary education, while private, religious, nonprofit, and other providers continue to play important roles in secondary, specialized, alternative, innovative, or complementary education.

This would not necessarily mean reducing educational diversity.

It could mean asking whether different parts of the education ecosystem can perform different functions while ensuring that every child has a strong and equitable starting point.

That is a research question—not a predetermined institutional design.

Reform Is Not Only About What Happens Inside Schools

Pakistan has undertaken numerous education reforms addressing curriculum, teaching, enrollment, gender equity, alternative learning pathways, school infrastructure, teacher development, and other dimensions of education.

These efforts remain important.

But an additional question is whether reforms occurring inside individual programmes or institutions can achieve their full potential without considering the spatial organization of the education system.

A curriculum reform does not determine where children live.

A teacher-development programme does not determine how far children travel.

A financial-support programme does not determine which children share the same classroom.

An infrastructure investment does not automatically determine whether school locations correspond to population distribution.

Spatial organization connects many of these dimensions.

This suggests another research question:

Could changing the geography through which children access education make other education reforms more systemic?

From Individual Choice to Collective Geography

The Question Behind School Choice

The conventional education question is often individual:

Which school should my child attend?

The larger societal question is different:

How should a city organize access to education for all of its children?

These questions are not necessarily contradictory.

Families will continue to have different educational preferences.

But a society can also decide how essential public services are geographically organized.

This distinction matters because individual choices can produce collective spatial patterns.

If large numbers of families travel across cities to access schools, the consequences extend beyond education.

They potentially affect:

• household travel time;

• transportation expenditure;

• traffic;

• fuel consumption;

• road demand;

• air quality;

• children's daily routines;

• parents' time;

• school accessibility; and

• neighborhood interaction.

The magnitude and direction of these effects are not assumed here.

They need to be measured.

Pakistan's Education Challenge Is Also a Spatial Challenge

Pakistan faces an enormous education access and learning challenge.

UNICEF currently estimates that 25.1 million children aged 5–16 are out of school, representing about 35 percent of the population in that age group.

But the national number alone does not tell us where the problem is occurring.

That distinction is increasingly important.

A major 2026 World Bank study combines satellite imagery, population data, government school records, and publicly available private-school locations to examine where out-of-school children are located relative to schooling opportunities. The research covers more than 137,000 public schools and more than 72,700 private schools.

The study shows why national averages are insufficient.

Some communities have substantial access to schools but still have children who are not enrolled.

Other communities have significant gaps in nearby schooling provision.

The World Bank analysis estimates that approximately 51 percent of the population lives within roughly 20 minutes of a school, while 37 percent of population blocks have no school nearby.

This does not mean that distance is the only barrier.

Cost, school quality, safety, gender norms, transportation, household circumstances, disability, teachers, and other factors also matter.

The important point is different:

Pakistan now has an opportunity to study education access as a spatial system rather than only as a national statistic.

The Potential System Effects

From Individual Journeys to Collective Systems

Imagine a city in which most children attend a school located within their own neighborhood.

The immediate effect would be geographic proximity.

But proximity could have wider consequences.

A child who previously travelled several kilometres might spend less time commuting.

Parents might make fewer school-related journeys.

School transport demand could change.

Traffic patterns could change.

Children could potentially walk or cycle more where safe infrastructure exists.

Families could have more time available for work, care, recreation, or community activities.

The effects could also be negative or uneven.

Poorly designed catchments could reinforce segregation, overwhelm particular schools, reduce perceived choice, or create inequities between neighborhoods.

That is precisely why these effects should be studied rather than assumed.

The research question is not:

“Will neighborhood schools solve Pakistan's problems?”

It is:

What changes when the spatial organization of access to education changes?

The Urban Dimension

The question becomes especially important in large urban areas.

Cities concentrate people, schools, employment, transportation, infrastructure, pollution, services, and economic activity.

They also contain substantial variation within relatively small geographic areas.

Two neighborhoods can be physically close while differing considerably in household income, school access, infrastructure, and educational opportunity.

This creates an opportunity for spatial research.

Instead of asking only how many children are out of school in a city, researchers can ask:

• Where are they?

• Where are schools?

• How large are school catchments?

• Which neighborhoods have excess demand?

• Which have unused capacity?

• How do children travel?

• How much time does schooling require from households?

• How do gender and household circumstances affect access?

• Where do community perceptions differ from technically defined catchments?

The 2026 World Bank work demonstrates that these questions are increasingly technically feasible at national scale.

A System of Measurable Effects

If a neighborhood-based education model were implemented at meaningful scale, its effects should not be evaluated only through enrollment.

Education

• enrollment and attendance;

• retention;

• learning outcomes;

• transition between education levels;

• gender equity;

• school capacity;

• teacher distribution.

Household economics

• school fees;

• transportation expenditure;

• parents' time;

• school-related household costs;

• opportunity costs.

Mobility and environment

• distance travelled;

• travel mode;

• travel time;

• school transportation;

• traffic patterns;

• fuel consumption;

• pedestrian accessibility;

• emissions.

Health and well-being

• physical activity;

• daily time burden;

• stress;

• safety;

• access to other services.

Social interaction

• socioeconomic mixing;

• neighborhood relationships;

• shared institutions;

• perceptions of belonging;

• social cohesion.

Public administration

• school planning;

• infrastructure allocation;

• service coverage;

• resource distribution;

• emergency and disaster planning.

The key principle is simple:

The effects should be measured across the system, not assumed from the intervention.

From Redistribution to Opportunity

The Economic Question

Pakistan has substantial programmes designed to support vulnerable households.

These programmes can provide important immediate assistance.

But another development question remains:

How can societies create conditions in which fewer people require long-term support because they have greater access to education, skills, employment, and economic opportunity?

This is not an argument for replacing social protection.

It is an argument for investigating the relationship between protection and opportunity.

Education is central to that relationship.

If a geographically organized basic education system improves access, reduces certain household costs, strengthens foundational learning, and expands later educational opportunities, the long-term economic effects could potentially extend beyond the school itself.

There may also be implications for employment through school construction, teaching, maintenance, community services, and related activities.

But the magnitude of any such economic effects would need to be modelled rather than assumed.

The research should therefore examine both:

redistribution that protects households today

and

systems that expand opportunity tomorrow.

Bigger Than School Catchments

The deeper principle is not actually about schools.

It is about the geography of essential services.

A recurring pattern in development is that people are expected to travel farther to reach services.

An alternative approach is to ask:

Can essential services be organized around the communities that need them?

This does not mean restricting people's freedom to travel.

People will continue to move for work, higher education, commerce, culture, specialized healthcare, and countless other reasons.

The question is whether basic services should require unnecessary movement when they could potentially be organized closer to where people live.

Education provides a particularly useful starting point because children attend regularly, school locations are geographically identifiable, and the consequences of school access extend across households and communities.

If the principle proves useful, it could eventually be investigated for other services.

Designing the Research

Why Start With Large Urban Areas?

A structural question requires a structural research design.

Large urban areas provide dense populations, diverse communities, complex transportation systems, large numbers of schools, extensive private-sector participation, and substantial variation in socioeconomic conditions.

They also generate enough observations to study differences between neighborhoods.

This does not mean that rural areas are less important.

They require their own models because geography, population density, transportation, school availability, and settlement patterns are different.

The initial focus on major urban areas is therefore a research strategy:

Understand the system where population density and institutional complexity make the spatial relationships especially visible.

The sequence could be:

Understand the system → build evidence → engage communities → develop alternative models → examine implementation → measure outcomes.

Research Before Prescription

The central idea should not begin with a predetermined blueprint.

It should begin with questions.

Would parents support neighborhood-based schooling?

What would make them support or reject it?

How do perceptions differ by income, gender, education, neighborhood, and existing school type?

What happens when technically generated catchments differ from community-defined neighborhoods?

Would families perceive a neighborhood school as equitable?

Would they be concerned about quality or choice?

How would private schools respond?

What would religious institutions see as their appropriate role?

How would school capacity need to change?

What infrastructure would be required?

What would happen to transportation patterns?

Would children walk more?

Would parents save time?

Would social interaction change?

Would educational outcomes change?

These are research questions.

They should be answered with evidence rather than assumption.

Letting Communities Define Their Geography

The Technical Map and the Community Map

One of the most interesting components of this research could be the comparison between two kinds of geography.

Model-defined geography

A technical model could define school catchments using:

• population;

• household distribution;

• building footprints;

• school capacity;

• existing enrollment;

• road networks;

• walking routes;

• physical barriers;

• school locations;

• land-use patterns; and

• other relevant criteria.

The resulting catchments could be designed to minimize gaps and excessive overlap while respecting real-world constraints.

Community-defined geography

Residents could then be asked:

“What is your neighborhood?”

Using an online map, participants could draw the area they consider their neighborhood or the area they believe should belong to a particular school.

Multiple residents could independently draw their boundaries.

The result would be a collection of community-defined geographies.

These could then be compared with technically generated catchments.

Where the two agree, there may be strong evidence of spatial consensus.

Where they differ, the differences become research findings.

Why does one community perceive its neighborhood differently from a technical model?

Are roads, markets, religious institutions, parks, rivers, social relationships, safety concerns, or historical boundaries influencing people's perceptions?

This creates a powerful research opportunity:

The final geography does not have to be imposed entirely by a model or entirely by community opinion. It can emerge through interaction between the two.

Building a National Evidence Base

A National Research Exercise

This question is too large for a single researcher.

It could become a national interdisciplinary research programme.

Students in geography could study spatial patterns.

Sociology students could examine social interaction and cohesion.

Psychology students could study perceptions and behavior.

Education students could investigate learning and school choice.

Economics students could model household costs and opportunity.

Public-health researchers could examine health-related dimensions.

Environmental researchers could examine mobility and pollution.

Urban planners could study infrastructure and land use.

Engineers could investigate transportation and building design.

Statistics students could develop sampling and analytical frameworks.

Computer scientists and GIS researchers could develop spatial models.

Researchers in public administration could examine implementation.

Each project could answer a genuine academic question while contributing to a larger evidence base.

The result would not simply be one report.

It could become a continuously expanding national research dataset.

A Different Model of Student Research

University research is often organized around individual theses and isolated projects.

There is value in that independence.

But imagine a different model.

A student conducts a study in one neighborhood.

Another studies a different neighborhood.

A supervisor coordinates several projects.

A university coordinates research across multiple departments.

Universities across a city contribute data.

Cities contribute to provincial evidence.

Provinces contribute to a national evidence base.

The individual thesis remains the student's own academic work.

But the evidence also becomes part of a larger research programme.

Over time, the accumulated research could reveal patterns that no single thesis could identify.

It could also generate new questions.

Those questions could become master's theses.

Some could become doctoral research.

Others could become policy studies.

Some could eventually become implementation research.

In this way, the intervention itself becomes a generator of research capacity.

A Participatory National Study

Starting With a National Perception Study

One practical starting point would be a large-scale survey across Pakistan.

Participants could first watch a short explanation of the neighborhood school concept in an appropriate local language.

The explanation would describe the basic idea without presenting it as an established solution.

Participants could then respond to structured questions such as:

• Would you support the concept?

• What would be your main concern?

• What potential benefit do you see?

• Would you be comfortable with children from different household backgrounds attending the same neighborhood school?

• How far does your child currently travel to school?

• How does your family currently choose a school?

• What factors matter most in that choice?

• How many school-age children are in your household?

• What would make you trust a neighborhood school?

An open-ended section would allow participants to raise issues researchers had not anticipated.

The objective would not simply be to calculate a percentage of people who support the idea.

It would be to understand why people support or reject it and how those views vary geographically and socially.

From Community Boundaries to School Catchments

The survey could also include a participatory mapping component.

Participants could see a map centered approximately on their area and draw the boundary they consider to be their neighborhood.

They could identify:

• important roads;

• barriers;

• landmarks;

• existing schools;

• preferred school locations; and

• perceived community boundaries.

This would create a unique dataset.

Instead of researchers deciding what a neighborhood is, residents would contribute their own spatial understanding.

Thousands of such responses could then be aggregated.

The resulting maps could reveal where communities agree and where perceptions are fragmented.

From Maps to Planning

Designing School Catchments

The next stage would combine community evidence with spatial modelling.

Suppose a city has:

• population distribution;

• building footprints;

• school locations;

• school capacity;

• enrollment;

• road networks;

• land-use information;

• physical barriers;

• community-defined neighborhood boundaries; and

• demographic data.

A model could generate alternative school catchments.

Researchers could compare:

existing school geography

with

model-generated catchments

and

community-defined catchments.

This comparison could reveal where the current system differs substantially from both technical accessibility and community perceptions.

It could also identify places where a new school might be needed.

The resulting system would therefore not simply answer:

“Where are the schools?”

It could begin answering:

“Where should educational access be organized, given population, infrastructure, capacity, mobility, and community perceptions?”

Schools as Community Infrastructure

A further research question concerns the physical design of schools themselves.

Urban land can be expensive.

A conventional low-rise school occupying a large site may not always be the only possible model.

In some locations, researchers could investigate multi-level school buildings that combine education with other community functions.

Possible complementary uses might include:

• community rooms;

• libraries;

• recreation;

• training facilities;

• health-related services;

• water facilities;

• renewable-energy systems;

• commercial activities; or

• other community infrastructure.

Such uses would require careful design, separate access where appropriate, safety provisions, and financial analysis.

The question is not whether every school should become a multipurpose building.

The question is:

Can schools be designed as sustainable community assets rather than isolated educational compounds?

From Evidence to Implementation

Implementation at Meaningful Scale

If research eventually supports a neighborhood-based model, implementation would raise another set of questions.

Education governance in Pakistan is substantially organized at the provincial level, making provincial institutions important to any large-scale education reform.

But implementation should not begin by assuming that one model fits every province or every city.

Different places have different:

• population densities;

• settlement patterns;

• school networks;

• private-school markets;

• transportation systems;

• social structures;

• gender-related constraints;

• environmental conditions; and

• administrative capacities.

The research should therefore identify which principles are transferable and which must be adapted locally.

The objective would be a scalable framework, not necessarily a uniform blueprint.

Schools, Services, and the Wider Urban System

If the evidence supports broader spatial organization, the school catchment could become a starting point for investigating other essential services.

The same geography could potentially be examined in relation to:

• health services;

• recreation;

• libraries;

• community facilities;

• public transport;

• emergency services;

• social services; and

• other neighborhood infrastructure.

The long-term question becomes whether a city can organize essential opportunities around communities without restricting the wider freedom of movement and choice that cities provide.

What This Is—and What It Is Not

This Is Not a Finished Solution

This proposal is not an argument for:

• eliminating private schools;

• eliminating religious education;

• restricting parental choice;

• forcing every child into an identical educational model;

• eliminating specialized schools;

• replacing social protection programmes;

• assuming that proximity automatically produces quality;

• assuming that socioeconomic mixing automatically produces social cohesion; or

• expanding government institutions without considering cost and capacity.

Nor is it an argument that school catchments alone can solve poverty, inequality, or Pakistan's education crisis.

Those would be claims that require evidence.

The proposal is narrower and, at the same time, potentially broader:

Study whether the spatial organization of basic education can influence the distribution of opportunity and generate effects beyond education itself.

A Research Agenda, Not a Predetermined Blueprint

The central idea should remain open to evidence.

Perhaps educational access improves but household travel does not change significantly.

Perhaps travel decreases but learning outcomes remain unchanged.

Perhaps social interaction increases but only in some neighborhoods.

Perhaps community-defined boundaries prove more important than technical optimization.

Perhaps the expected economic benefits do not materialize.

Perhaps unintended consequences emerge.

A serious research programme must be capable of discovering all of these outcomes.

The objective is not to prove the hypothesis.

The objective is to test it.

The Larger Question: The Geography of Opportunity

From Changing Schools to Changing Systems

The most important shift may therefore be conceptual.

Instead of viewing development primarily as a collection of programmes designed to address individual problems, we can also examine the spatial systems through which those problems are produced, experienced, and connected.

Instead of asking only:

How do we improve schools?

we can ask:

How should a city organize education?

Instead of asking only:

How do we help households cope with disadvantage?

we can ask:

How can the geography of opportunity be changed?

Instead of asking only:

Where should the next school be built?

we can ask:

What should the complete educational geography of a city look like?

And eventually:

What would a city look like if essential opportunities were deliberately organized around the communities that need them?

The National Research Question

The central research question can therefore be stated simply:

Can a spatially organized system of equitable access to essential public services—beginning with education—reduce geographic inequalities in opportunity while improving the efficiency, accessibility, sustainability, and social value of everyday public infrastructure?

The school catchment is the entry point.

The real subject is the geography of opportunity.

The research should combine spatial analysis, community participation, education research, economics, public health, environmental analysis, urban planning, sociology, engineering, data science, and public administration.

Most importantly, it should remain open to evidence.

Conclusion

Pakistan's education challenge is enormous. More than 25 million children aged 5–16 are currently estimated to be out of school, while new spatial research is beginning to show where those children live relative to the country's public and private school infrastructure.

This creates an opportunity.

Rather than treating education only as a question of schools, teachers, curriculum, and enrollment, we can also study it as a question of space.

Where are children?

Where are schools?

How are catchments formed?

How do communities understand their neighborhoods?

How far do children travel?

What does that travel cost households?

What happens when children from the same geographic community share an educational institution?

And what happens to the wider system when access to essential services is organized around communities rather than requiring communities to constantly reorganize their lives around distant services?

These questions cannot be answered by one article.

They require evidence.

They require communities.

They require universities.

They require government data and institutional knowledge.

They require researchers from many disciplines.

And they require a willingness to test assumptions rather than simply repeat them.

The school catchment may therefore be only the beginning.

The larger question is whether changing the geography through which people encounter opportunity can change the trajectory of development itself.

Change the geography of opportunity, and you may begin to change the trajectory of a society.