The new education minister, Mr. Ahsan Iqbal, has invited public comments on the national education policy. The draft of the policy document can be found here.
It is hoped that we will have a fruitful discussion on this issue and ideas for improvement in the national education policy here at Pakistaniat, possibly leading some of the participants to even give some valuable suggestions to the education ministry.
I hope to read the document in the coming days, but in the mean time, here are some general thoughts on how we should approach such issues.
We would love to have instant reform, which unfortunately is not possible. Our suggestions and criticism should be made while keeping this basic reality in mind. We can however break down reforms into short and long-term ones and see what can realistically be achieved over what time frame.
Secondly, there is absolutely no denying that funding is important, but the utilization of existing funds is also equally important. We have a tendency to overemphasize the shortage of money and use it as a convenient excuse for a lack of serious effort for institution building and the failure to make proper use of available resources. As a general rule, we should always be weary of overly steep increases in funding. Too much money going in too fast, though good for making impressive news headlines for the concerned ministry, can often lead to more corruption and institutional decay instead of bringing about a genuine improvement.
So while the education budget certainly needs to be increased to at least 4% of GDP as soon as possible, it must not be forgotten that such an increase by itself will not lead to much improvement if there is no prior ground work for ensuring that the extra money will not just be wasted away through corruption and inefficiency. And such ground work will inevitably require a bit of slowing down and setting achievable targets instead of unrealistic ones.
A somewhat related concern relates to how we see ‘big picture’ ideas as opposed to apparently smaller and basic things that are not even very hard to implement, but can make a significant impact. Both are very important, but we sometimes grossly underestimate and dismiss the simpler, but less grand ideas by saying that they do not ‘address the big picture’ or some other such ridiculous criticism. In the end, the ‘fundamental paradigm shift’ or ‘revolution’ does not materialize, but we also forego the smaller and incremental but more achievable improvements that can accumulate into something substantial over time.
Lastly, a good education policy should produce socially aware individuals and not just money making robots. We need people who can have the sense to start thinking ahead before an economic bubble bursts, before the severity of an energy crisis hits them right in the face and before a food shortage leads to a famine or violent riots and are willing to make compromises to their personal lifestyles and start agitating for badly needed policy reforms for their own selves if not out of any concern for the society.
References:
1. Ministry of Education, Pakistan
2. Photos for this post are from flickr.com
We need liberal education. We need to add fine art, logic-philosphy, diversity of world religions and ethics in our class rooms.
Perhaps for the first time it is being opened for public debate and I will certainly try to read this lengthy draft and will give comments in my humble capacity as a suffering parent.
One hopes that the Minister must have consulted and taken notes from many such draft policies previously prepared by various commissions formed for this purpose after burning midnight oil but unfortunately consigned to the dust bin.
You might find this recently-released report from the World Bank to be relevant.
http://go.worldbank.org/MWAMK45OD0
@A.D. Shah
FYI: The minimum salary of a government school
Just downloaded the report and skimmed though it. It does look like quite a comprehensive and well structured paper.
I also agree with the comment that the purpose of education should be simple. Only to make students competent in essential subjects and not load them with lots of ideological and religious things. Those can come from elsewhere (home, religion, society). The purpose of the school should only be to produce competent students. Nothing more.