The Burden of Good Intentions: How Pakistan’s Private Schools Enroll Special Needs Students Without Systems of Support

Abstract

This study critically examines the dichotomy of inclusive education within Pakistan’s rapidly expanding private school sector. The core argument rests on a paradox: private schools exhibit the "Good Intention" of enrolling Students with Special Needs (SWSN) as a market response to high parental demand for perceived quality. However, this enrollment is consistently decoupled from the necessary "Systems of Support" structural, financial, and pedagogical. The consequent "Burden" is the creation of a system of tokenistic inclusion, where students are physically present but functionally excluded due to the failure to provide specialized services. This failure is rooted in systemic state underinvestment, a resulting crisis of human capital (untrained teachers), and severe regulatory impotence that permits private institutions to charge exorbitant, often illegal, fees without accountability. This dynamic externalizes the entire cost and responsibility for specialized support onto vulnerable families, who are forced to rely on expensive external tuition to compensate for the school’s pedagogical deficits. Policy recommendations mandate systemic regulatory reforms to link fee collection directly to verifiable resource provision, leveraging successful local case studies as the necessary benchmark for quality assurance and equity.

Keywords: Special Education, Inclusive Education, Pakistan, Private Schools, Teacher Training, Policy Implementation, Financial Burden