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Article History

Received: 21 October 2024

Accepted: 7 October 2025

First Online: 20 December 2025

Competing interests

: The authors declare no competing interests.

: This study did not involve any direct interaction with human participants. The analysis was based exclusively on anonymised and aggregated administrative datasets obtained through an email request to the monitoring & evaluation unit, data custodian of the School Education Department (SED), Government of Punjab, Pakistan. A part of this dataset is used in this study is also publicly accessible via the Programme Monitoring& Implementation Unit (PMIU) portal of the School Education Department, Government of Punjab: . According to the Punjab Transparency and Right to Information Act (2013), anonymised public data may be used for research without requiring separate institutional ethics approval. Additional safeguards are outlined in the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA, 2016) and the Draft Personal Data Protection Bill (2023), which regulate the lawful use of personal data and permit research use of anonymised data under appropriate safeguards. In the United Kingdom, the study complies with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, which allow the use of anonymised data for research purposes. Because no personally identifiable information was accessed and no direct contact with individuals occurred; formal ethics approval was not required. The research was carried out in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki, ensuring that the rights, dignity, and privacy of individuals were respected throughout.

: This study did not involve direct participation of human subjects. The data analysed were collected through official administrative procedures of the PEC and the School Education Department (SED), where schools and students provide information as part of mandatory registration and examination processes. Consent for data collection and its use were therefore embedded within these official procedures under the Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan. The datasets made available by PMIU and PEC are deidentified prior to public release. In accordance with the Personal Data Protection Bill (2023) of Pakistan, anonymised data may be used for research, archiving, or statistical analysis with appropriate safeguards for privacy. Similarly, the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 permit the use of anonymised data for research without requiring individual informed consent. Because this study relied exclusively on secondary, anonymised, and publicly accessible datasets, no individual informed consent was required.