Those discussions and comments on the essay forums were so helpful to read through! I hope we can revive that sense of academic community here so we can all learn and grow together.

I posted my outline in one of the threads here. Let me go and search for it. As for the introduction, it has literally been over an year and I don't remember it word for word. I do remember that I went out on a limb and wrote a very "literary" opening by setting a scene. The topic I attempted was Classrooms decide the future of a nation and I began by describing a young girl in a classroom being asked to "flip open to page so and so". She glances around not realising that in amongst the drowsy chubby faces of her classmates sat some of the future great artisans, teachers, doctors, engineers, politicians, policy makers etc etc. I really set this scene describing the sights the sounds of a classroom- going into probably more detail than was strictly necessary. I think the introduction lasted a page and a half! I know I know that was breaking all the rules and if I could've edited it, I would've tried and make it more compact. Another thing I did different was I interpreted the scope of the topic to only apply to "classrooms" i.e the physical and social environment in such institutions rather than talking about education in general. By limiting the scope I could really zero in and focus on the topic rather than floundering about with too many points and arguments.

This is the outline of the essay that I attempted in the actual paper in 2019. The topics was "Classrooms decide the future of the nation." The remedial measures of course had more points, I just can't recall them. I took a fairly romanticized view of the topic, rather than getting into the nitty-gritty of the economic, political, social etc impacts of education as a whole. My mother is a Montessori directress and I've attended many workshops detailing the importance of a "good" classroom environment and overall experience for the proper development of a child. I used that to advantage and laced a good many Maria Montessori quotes throughout. Also as I mentioned before I stuck to the wordings of the topic and focused on "classrooms/learning environment" specifically not "education" as a whole

1. Introduction
2. Classrooms: Historical and contemporary examples of their role in nation building (Examples of student participation in Pakistan movement, and for the current examples US Parkland shooting survivors rallies on gun control, Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg and her voicing climate change concerns and the French yellow vest movement which is also now being taken up by students for school reforms)
3. Role of classroom in nation building
3.1 socialization
3.2 personality development
3.3 evolution and development of ideas and values
3.4 creativity and innovation
3.5 Transmission of knowledge
4. Hallmarks of a conducive learning environment
4.1 Child-centered
4.2 Participative
4.3 Holistic development
5. Case study of Pakistan: How our classrooms are perpetuating our social, political and economic problems.
6. Remedial measures
7. Conclusion



I had gone into the exam hall thinking I would attempt an economics topic (my degree is in economics) but the only topic that applied was so general that I was sure everyone was going to attempt that- that would make it hard to make original points and stand out so I went with this topic because it was far from being controversial and I knew that I could get a lot of arguments and examples in.