Anticipatory action for education: lessons from a pilot project in Pakistan

Anticipatory action for education: lessons from a pilot project in Pakistan

Every monsoon season in Pakistan, millions of children face the possibility that school will stop. Floods damage educational facilities, close roads and displace families, and destroy their books and school records; all these can disrupt their education. In 2024, for example, climate-related school disruptions affected an estimated 26.2 million students in Pakistan, and 242.2 million globally.

Anticipatory action for education is a new and growing area of practice that seeks to ensure the continuity of education ahead of predictable hazards. Yet despite its underlying logic and growing guidance on how to achieve this, there is limited evidence on what works, and under which conditions.

In 2025, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) launched a pilot project in Pakistan. Implemented by Save the Children, UNICEF and local partners, it operated in six districts of Punjab and Sindh, covering 300 government schools. When the Chenab and Indus rivers rose in late August 2025, the anticipatory actions for education were implemented in Punjab. In Sindh, the flood thresholds were not reached and the actions were not implemented; however, schools still gained from preparedness plans, trained teachers and stronger coordination.

Independently evaluated by Tufts University, this pilot project offers some important initial findings on how anticipatory action for education can work.

School-based anticipatory action is feasible and valuable…

The study found encouraging evidence that school-based anticipatory action is feasible and valued by stakeholders and recipients.

School-protection measures delivered visible results, with alternative learning options being available for longer. When the triggers were met in Punjab, 62 schools were prioritized as needing protection measures (e.g., barrier walls, sandbags) and 37 temporary learning centres were established, as part of a complementary programme. Afterwards, teachers in these schools reported that they were able to re-open more quickly due to these measures, so school closures were shortened. The protection measures and the relocation of school records and materials were gains that the communities recognized most.

Education was recognized as a valuable part of anticipatory action. When Pakistan established its National Coordination Forum on Anticipatory Action in 2024, education was not identified as a sectoral entry point. Through this pilot, the Education Sector Working Group, working closely with OCHA as an entry point to national anticipatory action frameworks, brought education into these discussions for the first time, giving it ‘a seat at the table’ alongside more established sectors for anticipatory action, such as food security. The pilot has since become a high-profile example of why and how the education sector can play a role in anticipatory action, with advocacy value well beyond Pakistan.

Affected communities shifted from reaction to preparedness. Schools involved in the pilot moved from seeing floods as an inevitable disaster to something they can plan for, for example by pinning flood calendars on classroom walls and creating ‘communication trees’ to assign roles in the event of a flood. As one education official put it: “The mindset has been the biggest change. Before, we waited for things to happen. Now, we plan for them.”

… but there’s more to do to fulfil the potential of anticipatory action for education

The pilot project in Pakistan was successful in putting education on the anticipatory action map in Pakistan for the first time and demonstrating that it is a feasible approach to support educational continuity during crises. But, as with any new approach, it also raised operational challenges that must be ironed out for anticipatory action in education to reach its potential.

Anticipatory action should go beyond protecting school buildings and focus on broader education continuity – including while students are temporarily displaced. The pilot demonstrated that protecting school infrastructure is necessary, but not sufficient to sustain education continuity. Even when a school remains intact, children cannot always attend, because roads are blocked, families have migrated, girls cannot travel safely, or households are prioritizing food and income over education during a crisis.

The evaluation found that floods did not create these barriers so much as deepen them. Lost household income, unaffordable uniforms and transport, and unsafe routes kept children, especially girls and children with disabilities, from returning to school after a shock. Continuity therefore requires addressing both the supply side (e.g., protecting school buildings, preparing alternative learning sites) and the demand side (e.g. pre-positioned learning and hygiene kits, support for school-related costs after livelihood shocks, pre-mapped safe routes for girls and children with disabilities).

Measuring continuity was also a challenge. While children in the pilot benefitted from education support in temporary learning centres, attendance was not recorded in all temporary learning centres or other alternative learning spaces, making it difficult to know objectively who continued to learn. Future frameworks should build better ways to track education continuity in emergencies across different learning sites (e.g., schools, temporary learning centres, remote learning).

Preparing education systems for anticipatory action means building in time for new actors to come on board. Anticipatory action for education involves introducing a range of actors – teachers, parent committees, students – to the practicalities of acting ahead of a hazard. This necessitates time for training and learning, as well as ensuring that barriers are addressed to enable local actors to be meaningfully involved. During the pilot, readiness activities, including teacher training, risk mapping, retrofitting and committee activation, were still under way when the flood trigger was activated. As a result, schools in Punjab found themselves preparing and responding at the same time, blurring the line between anticipatory action and emergency response.

Readiness also depends on preparing local institutions to lead key parts of the response to a hazard. The pilot confirmed that teachers and school management committees are effective anchors for community mobilization, early warnings and school-level planning, but not every function suits an anticipatory model. The pilot's financing mechanism, designed to route funds through these committees, could not move fast enough within the short trigger window, as bank transfers took a minimum of seven working days while Punjab's trigger window was only four to five. Together, these experiences provide lessons for future design.

Looking ahead

As climate shocks intensify, education systems need financing that is faster, more predictable and designed to be used before education is disrupted. This experience in Pakistan shows that anticipatory action for education is feasible and welcomed by local actors and communities. These initial lessons can help the model be refined, replicated and scaled up.

The next step requires sustained investment and collaboration across humanitarian, climate, development and private actors, combined with measuring impact and cost-effectiveness of anticipatory action for education. ECW will drive these efforts with its new strategy.