Pakistani three-year-old Afshan walks a tightrope on her way to school as she tumbles across a metal girder spanning a ditch of putrid flood water, eyes fixed ahead.

After a record monsoon rain flooded their classroom in the southeastern city of Chandan Mori, this is the route Afshan and her siblings now walk to a tent where their classes are held.

“It’s a risky business to send children to school across this bridge,” Afshan’s father, Abdul Qadir, 23, told AFP.

“But we are compelled… to secure their future and ours.”

In Pakistan, where a third of the country lives on less than $4 a day, education is a rare ticket out of crushing poverty.

But this summer, floods destroyed or damaged 27,000 schools, sparking a humanitarian disaster that has seen 7,000 more requisitioned as relief centers, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.

The charity said the education of 3.5 million children was disrupted as a result.

“Everything is gone, we lost our studies,” said 10-year-old Kamran Babbar, who has been living in a nearby tent city since his house and school were flooded.

Before the rains that have been linked to climate change, Afshan followed her sisters to a bright green schoolhouse.

About two and a half months after they finally let up, their school remains inundated with standing water.

More than 300 boys and girls have made their way into three tents, where they sit on floors covered with plastic sheeting and chorus to answer the teachers’ questions.

As noon approaches, the tents are baked by the sun, and the students fan themselves with exercise books—and quench their thirst with gulps of murky, polluted floodwater.

Many cannot muster the strength to stand up when asked to answer questions from teacher Noor Ahmed.

“When they get sick, and most of them do, it drastically affects attendance,” he said.

In this conservative corner of Pakistan, many girls are already being kept out of school and groomed for life as domestic workers.

The prospects of enrolled students were dampened by hunger and malnutrition even before the monsoons washed away vast areas of crops.

And in the last two years schools have been closed for 16 months because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The floods – which submerged a third of Pakistan and displaced eight million – are another hurdle many will not overcome.

“We are nurturing a sick generation,” said Ahmed.

In the nearby town of Mounder, monsoon storms tore off the roof of the government school.

The walls are cracked and crumbling, and students are now gathering outside for fear of a collapse.

The boys study in the shade of a tree in the courtyard, while the girls gather in a donated tent nearby.

“Such events will leave an everlasting traumatic impression on the girls,” said teacher Rabia Iqbal.

“If we’re going to get them sane, we need to get them out of the tents and into real classrooms right away,” she added.

But going back to school probably won’t be quick.

Analysis suggests the bill to rebuild schools and restore the education system will be nearly $1 billion — total repair bills total nearly $40 billion — in a nation already mired in economic turmoil .

Undeterred by the troubles ahead, the girls at Chandan Mori High School trudge each day to a makeshift classroom two miles away.

“We don’t let such circumstances get us down,” said 13-year-old Shaista Panwar.