English-Medium vs Urdu-Medium Schools in Pakistan: What Actually Changes for the Child?

Ask Pakistani parents what kind of school they want and 'English medium' often comes up early. The label carries hopes about jobs, confidence and university. Urdu-medium schooling, meanwhile, is sometimes treated as second best, which is unfair to Urdu: the 2026 study below describes it as Pakistan's national lingua franca, and Federal Board Matric students still take it as a compulsory subject. The more useful question is not which language is better, but in which language your particular child will actually understand maths, science and social studies, and whether the school will also teach the other language properly.

The strongest Pakistan-specific evidence we found points to a detail most admissions offices never mention: consistency. A study published in May 2026 in the American Journal of STEM Education, led by Sadia Muzaffar Bhutta of the Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development, tested 15,391 students and observed 589 teachers in 153 elementary schools, in what the authors describe as a nationally representative sample. They looked at whether the language of the textbook, the language of classroom teaching and the language of the test were the same. Students who experienced that consistency scored significantly higher in both mathematics and science than students who did not. The authors say language consistency works alongside the type of school and the quality of teaching, and that the effect was strongest where teaching was relatively better.

That finding describes a situation many Pakistani families will recognise. The authors note that most learners use their mother tongue at home, that Urdu functions as the national lingua franca, and that English is widely the language of instruction in private schools. A school can call itself English medium while its teachers explain in Urdu or Punjabi and its children memorise English answers for the test. Another can call itself Urdu medium while using English-language science books. Neither label tells you what happens in the classroom. In the 2026 study, inconsistent language use across textbooks, teaching and tests was associated with lower scores, alongside differences in school type and teaching quality.

International research leans the same way. In July 2021, releasing its policy report Loud and Clear, the World Bank estimated that about 37 percent of students in low- and middle-income countries are required to learn in a different language from the one they speak, and recommended teaching children in their first language from early childhood through at least the first six years of primary school, introducing a second language first as a foreign language, with an early focus on speaking and listening, and continuing first-language instruction even after the second language takes over. The Bank's argument is not against English: it says children who first learn in a language they know are better placed to learn other languages later. A 2022 World Bank blog on Malaysia reported that students there did worse in mathematics and science tests after those subjects were switched from Bahasa Malaysia to English. Malaysia is not Pakistan, and none of this proves that any single Pakistani school should teach in one language or another, but the direction of the evidence is consistent.

In Pakistan, the question of which language counts as the child's first language is itself complicated. For a child in Karachi, Lahore or Islamabad who speaks Urdu at home, Urdu may be that language. For a child in Peshawar, Sukkur, Quetta or Multan it may be Pashto, Sindhi, Balochi or Saraiki, with Urdu already a second language. Some families speak English at home too. That is why this guide does not rank one medium above the other. The practical test is simpler: can your child explain a science or maths idea back to you, in any language, after the school has taught it?

What about reading? The provisional ASER Pakistan 2025 national report, launched on 26 March 2026 and based on household assessments of more than 160,000 children aged 5 to 16, found that 51 percent of Class 5 children could read a Class 2 level story in Urdu or Sindhi, and 54 percent could read Class 2 level English sentences. Among Class 5 children, 55 percent in private schools and 53 percent in government schools could read at least English sentences, while 51 percent in private schools and 52 percent in government schools could read at least a story in Urdu or Sindhi. The report's foreword says the gaps between government and private schools are too small to show either system is reliably delivering strong learning at scale, and it warns that its 2025 figures are a new baseline and not directly comparable with earlier rounds. ASER reports by school type, not by medium, so these numbers do not tell you whether English-medium or Urdu-medium schools do better. They do show that at Class 5 roughly half of children, in both kinds of school, have not yet reached Class 2 level reading, which is why checking your own child's reading in both languages matters more than a school's label.

Exams are where the medium question becomes concrete. The Federal Board's general rules for examination list three permitted media of examination: Urdu, English, and an approved provincial language, for which permission has to be sought. FBISE's 30 August 2024 notification on the National Curriculum of Pakistan 2022-23 lists both English Compulsory and Urdu Compulsory among the SSC-I subjects with new assessment frameworks, so English and Urdu are both compulsory subjects in the Federal Board's Matric scheme. Provincial boards set their own rules, and we did not verify each board's current medium options, so ask the school which board your child will sit and in which language the school registers its candidates. On the Cambridge side, Urdu remains a subject too: Cambridge's O Level Second Language Urdu syllabus (3248), for exams from 2024 to 2029, has candidates answer in Urdu. Our guides to O Levels versus Matric and to Cambridge versus FBISE cover those routes in more detail.

Policy has not stood still, and Punjab is the clearest example of how often it moves. Dawn reported in July 2019 that the Punjab government would return public primary schools to Urdu as the medium of instruction from the following March, with English taught as a subject, reversing an earlier policy under which English had been introduced as the medium in public schools. In December 2020, the head of the National Curriculum Council, Rafiq Tahir, was quoted by Dawn as saying that under the Single National Curriculum science and mathematics would be taught in English and all other books published in Urdu, and that teachers would be free to use Urdu and regional languages as the medium of instruction. In September 2025, ProPakistani reported that Punjab's official textbooks were available to download in Urdu and English versions. In October 2025, it reported that the Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board would print History, Geography and the Islamiat workbook for Grades 6 to 8 in Urdu from the next academic year, saying many pupils found these subjects hard to follow in English. And on 24 September 2026 Punjab's chief minister approved a new school curriculum with lighter textbooks; the reports we read did not say whether it changes the medium of instruction. The lesson for parents is that the language of your child's books can change with policy, so ask each year which version the school uses.

Other provinces add a third language rather than choosing between two. The National Curriculum Council states that provinces are fully autonomous in education policy and curriculum. In Sindh, Dawn reported in September 2018 that the education department directed private schools to teach Sindhi as a compulsory subject from Class 3 to Class 9, citing the province's private schools rules, and ProPakistani reported in August 2022 that the department had issued a final warning, asking Cambridge International and the British Council in Pakistan to include Sindhi as a compulsory subject for O Level schools. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, The News reported in September 2023 that the Private Schools Regulatory Authority directed all private schools to introduce Pashto or other regional languages as compulsory subjects, following a June 2023 Peshawar High Court judgment on a 2012 cabinet decision. Implementation has been uneven: a district leader of the teachers' group Malgari Ustazan said in April 2024, as reported by Dawn, that the provincial government had not obeyed court orders on making Pashto compulsory, while ProPakistani reported in January 2026 that a district education office in Nowshera had told its government schools Pashto is compulsory 'up to second year', as the notice put it. For families in Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Peshawar or Abbottabad, that means asking not only about English and Urdu but also about the provincial language, how many periods it gets and how it is assessed.

Home support is the part parents control. A child in an English-medium school whose family does not read English can still do well, but it helps to know in advance how homework is supported: whether the school explains new work in class so it does not have to be taught at home, whether there are Urdu glossaries for science terms, and whether tuition becomes an expected add-on. The ASER 2025 report found that 44 percent of private school students and 24 percent of government school students were attending paid tuition, so ask directly whether the school expects it. A child in an Urdu-medium school may need deliberate English practice, such as reading, speaking and writing, if the family plans a later move to an English-medium or Cambridge school. Either way, reading together at home in the language your family uses best is not wasted time; the World Bank's case is that a strong first language supports learning a second.

The long-term transition is where a medium choice has consequences. We found no Pakistani study of children switching medium mid-school. One risk is that a switch can leave a child's textbooks, teaching and tests in different languages for a while, the kind of mismatch the 2026 study associated with lower maths and science scores. If a move is likely, for example from an Urdu-medium primary school to an English-medium secondary school, or towards O Level, plan it around a natural break, ask the new school how it helps newcomers with subject vocabulary, and check your child's reading in the new language before the switch rather than after.

SchoolNama's own data cannot answer this question for you yet, and we would rather say so. Our listings do not currently record medium of instruction as a field. Across the 6,687 campus records in our 15 launch cities, only six include the word 'medium' in the school's name, five English and one Urdu. A curriculum tag such as Matric or O Level is not a medium either: FBISE allows Matric to be examined in Urdu or English. So use SchoolNama to narrow schools by city, area, curriculum, gender, fees and transport, put up to four side by side on the compare page, and then ask each school the questions below. Our guide to rote versus conceptual learning has further advice on judging what happens in a classroom on a school visit.