This article contextualises "Education in Pakistan, a White Paper" (2007), an influential education policy paper in Pakistan. The focus is on the ways the White Paper constructs its own contexts as a complement to the policy solutions proffered. Here we recognise Seddon's point about the discursive work of policy in constructing context. We focus on the way the White Paper constructs its political/ideological context and its global/national context. The White Paper works with the trope of a binary construction of Islam--fundamentalist or moderate--which rearticulates Orientalist Western constructions. The analysis of the construction of the global/national contexts demonstrates the framing of the policy by the Millennium Development Goals, and the Washington and post-Washington consensus. (Contains 18 notes.)