Zubeida Mustafa A HEFTY sum of over a trillion rupees has been earmarked for education collectively in the federal and provincial budgets for 2021-2022 that were announced in June. This amount has been growing over the years. But this massive financial investment in human resources has not produced the impact that could have rationally been expected on the learning outcomes of children in Pakistan. This has been confirmed year after year by Aser (Annual Status of Education Report). Aser 2021 released recently has also recorded the learning losses suffered during the pandemic lockdown. Its key finding is shocking. In 2019, 22 per cent of Grade 3 children had managed to work out two-digit division sums. This percentage dropped to 12 this year.