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Pakistan’s education conundrum

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In Brief

With 70 per cent of its citizens under the age of 35, Pakistan has one of the youngest populations on the planet, yet the country has not been able to enjoy the demographic dividend that a young population can bring.

This is largely because of the sorry state of Pakistan’s education system and the failure of successive governments to provide even basic education for all:

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according to the 2012 Global Monitoring Report, Pakistan continues to have the second-largest number of out-of-school children in the world and only one in three children manage to complete primary school. While out-of-school children are a serious problem, what of the vast majority of Pakistani children who do in fact attend school? According to the 2011 Labor Force Survey, the unemployment rate in general paradoxically rises with increasing education. And those who do have jobs typically work in vulnerable employment. Although formidable social, cultural, economic and political factors account for these troubling figures, a fundamental problem lies with the quality of education itself, particularly in government and low-cost private schools.

The poor-quality education in Pakistan is part of a vicious cycle: teachers practice didactic teaching methods that encourage rote memorisation rather than critical thinking; government-sanctioned textbooks do not invite students to use higher-order thinking skills; and assessments focus on reproducing knowledge rather than pushing students to question and think for themselves. This kind of content-centred, uncritical education is the norm from primary school through college. Thus, even those children who do manage to graduate from high school are not prepared for salaried employment in general or even skilled trades, let alone ‘21st-century jobs’ that require a high level of critical independent thinking. This is a huge loss for Pakistan, especially considering its youthful population.

Numerous reforms are being carried out in an attempt to tackle the issue of quality education — mostly with external help, as Pakistan only spends a meagre 2.3 per cent of its GNP on education. Since 2009, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has partnered with the Pakistani government to completely overhaul pre-service education across the country through the multi-million dollar USAID Teacher Education Project. The thrust of the project has been to introduce a new four-year teaching degree and to revamp the curriculum of the existing two-year degree. The project has been a noble effort, and both authors of this piece have worked on it in different capacities. While the program has the necessary ingredients for success, its implementation has been fraught with issues. Specifically, it has not been able to effectively address the capacity of institutions to implement the completely overhauled and expanded curriculum. For example, there is a shortage of faculty to teach key content courses, as well as a lack of adequate proficiency among faculty to effectively implement and teach new pedagogical approaches.

The problem of institutional capacity can be seen in the equally ambitious but smaller-scale School Reform Roadmap. The reform plan, which began in earnest in 2011 with support from the British Department for International Development, focuses specifically on the Punjab — Pakistan’s largest and most prosperous province. According to a recent report on the reforms (written by Sir Michael Barber, the chief education strategist at Pearson, an international education publishing and assessment company), aptly titled the Good News from Pakistan, there is much to celebrate: a new system of checks and balances has resulted in increased student enrolment and attendance and reduced teacher absenteeism in just two years (at least on paper). The very fact that the Punjab has a plan is certainly cause for celebration; it provides a means for coordinating reform efforts. However, with its strong focus on ‘data’ and assessment ‘results’ (unsurprising given the Pearson link), the roadmap seems to be sending the message that improved results — in terms of teacher and student attendance and test scores — is a sign of improved quality. Without question, monitoring data is important, but data are a means to an end, not an end in and of themselves. Without tackling the key components of quality (teacher education, textbooks and assessment), the roadmap is simply directing everyone in circles; despite the feeling of momentum, nothing has really changed.

Both the USAID Teacher Education Project and the School Reform Roadmap are positive developments on the education scene in Pakistan, and the focus on teachers and monitoring are both key to sustainable educational change. But rather than wasting time and money on superficial results or quick fixes, education reforms need to pay far more attention to the capacity and quality of institutions that support schooling. This can only happen with greater commitment by the Pakistani government; last week’s news that the government plans to double the education budget to 4 per cent is certainly a step in the right direction. Yet it is clear that without targeted efforts to seriously address the issue of textbooks, assessments and quality teacher education, the potential of current reforms will simply not be met — much like the millions of Pakistani youth who will not be able to live up to their capabilities without a quality education.

Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher is a Senior Lecturer at the Graduate School of Education, University of PennsylvaniaYou can follow her on Twitter @AmeenaGK

Ayesha Awan is an independent researcher with over ten years of experience in the field of educational development in Pakistan.

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