A Chance Apart

It was just another measly day in my economics class. I was flipping through the pages of the chapter we would start that day, Human Resources. As I let my eyes wander over the fairy-tale scenarios presented to me, a particular sentence caught my eye:

"Education is not only a right but a powerful instrument for breaking cycles of poverty."

A sentence that held weight, but something I couldn't fully comprehend.

I sat there looking at my teacher, my desk filled with doodles, and my book, which didn't see the light of day often. It made me wonder—wonder about that child who had to work for their family under the scorching heat of the Mumbai sun, while I sat in my air-conditioned classroom, lost in thought. A child with just as much ambition, just as much curiosity, and just as much intelligence. But the only detail that separates us? A chance.

I closed my eyes and began to imagine a world where the right to education wasn't a privilege but a norm. A world where money didn't decide who got to learn, where borders didn't control who could study where. I kept going. A place where students from every city, village, town, and island would come together to share ideas, discover new perspectives, and freely converse without the burden of expectations and responsibilities. Where girls wouldn't be dragged out of classrooms with the excuse of traditions but rather be sitting beside classmates who had just as much of a right to education. Where students with disabilities wouldn't be shunned or hidden away as if they were some abnormality, but would be included just like any other student.

It felt... utopian. A dream of sorts, something so close yet so distant.

It made me think of the boy who brought milk to my house every week. He wasn't much older than me. He lived in a hut beside his shop while I lived in an apartment, protected from the reality of most children. He woke up every morning to work while I went to school, which felt like a burden most days. His rugged hands grew harder with each passing day, while mine were never exposed to the burden of working to the bone. Though we live just a kilometer apart, our lives are separated by more than distance; they're divided by opportunity.

Or the lack of it.

But what about my friend Afi? She came to my class from a country I didn't even know existed until I started talking to her. Moreover, she came from a country that faced challenges I had only read about in history books. She didn't know much Hindi when she first came here, but now? She participates in Hindi speech competitions that I couldn't make heads or tails of. All this because she was given basic access to what I took for granted. She is what I consider an example of the extraordinary.

But I wish she weren't.

I want education to be the most ordinary, most accessible, most expected thing in the world.

Let's snap out of imagination for a second, because not every child is as fortunate as Afi and me; in fact, most children aren't. Globally, 16% of children and youth (primary to upper secondary) are not attending school; in low-income countries, 33% of school-aged children and youth are out of school. Globally, girls and young women make up 48% of the out-of-school population, with 122 million girls and young women not attending school. These statistics aren't just numbers—they're lives, they're people, they're children. Most of all, they're humans, all of whom had dreams, aspirations, and plans for a brighter future. But the only reason they don't stand here with me today is because of a lack of opportunity. A chance they were never given, a chance that should have been their right from the start.

Looking at just numbers on a screen gives us this feeling of safety, this feeling that such injustice is not from our world, but it's embedded into the everyday routines of millions of women, not even a country apart from us. Afghanistan, for example, where women aren't even allowed to speak in front of a man, much less get an education or start a career. Women who once dominated classrooms with their intellect now sit behind locked doors, wondering if they will ever be able to step into those classes again.

Women who once had a choice on whether they wanted to wear religious clothing are now hidden behind the mask of a hijab, whether they like it or not.

1,500 km away from me, girls who haven't even reached the age of 11 drop out, not because they wish to, but because they're forced to. Girls who dream of the same successful life as I do now sit at home fulfilling "duties" unquestioningly. Women who leave behind their own wants and needs, their entire lives, to slave away their days for parents who treat them as commodities to be bought or sold into the life of a man they've never even met.

We say education is a right, but when this "right" becomes as inaccessible as it is right now, it is but a word that has no deeper meaning—a hollow shell waiting to be conceived into reality. What we need right now is not fleeting dreams or empty promises; it's change.

A truly progressive Commonwealth wouldn't determine one's right to education on zip codes, bank balances, or gender. It wouldn't just build infrastructure; it would build dreams. Dreams of those who never imagined they would be able to have access to something they thought was unreachable.

We've come a long way as a Commonwealth, creating awareness, building schools, global treaties, and youth initiatives, but this cannot stop us now.

We can't afford to shatter the dreams of the billions of children across the world who long to share our classrooms, write our exams, and chase the same futures, just because we failed to look beyond our own.

Initiatives such as The Commonwealth Education Hub, The Commonwealth of Learning, the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Program, and many other such programs concentrate on providing accessible and affordable education. But we cannot stop here.

We must create a Commonwealth where every child, irrespective of borders, income, and pronouns, is given not just an equal but an accessible right to education. Because opening schools is not about opening gates; it's about creating futures.

Because right now,
Too many women are following pointless traditions rather than academic curricula. Too many young hands are scanning groceries instead of turning pages.
Too many kids are counting change instead of learning to change the world.
And too many children are earning wages before they've earned a chance to learn.

And maybe then, I'll see that boy again—not delivering milk to my doorstep, but working on the same group project I dread. Not living in a fragile hut, but in the same school dorms I've come to adore. Not under the boiling heat of the sun, but complaining alongside me about the chilling AC that never seems to be at the right temperature. I hope to see that boy again—not just as a student, a peer, or a friend, but as proof that when we chose equity, we rewrote futures.

I’m Parinita. A student, writer, and semi-professional overthinker. I write essays about the things that keep me up at night: belief, bias, and everything in between.