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
I agree with Ahmed Shahid.Concentrating more on Ph.Ds will not work.It has not worked in the past too.What may work is going to the grassroots or even at the school and college level.
The infrascture for colleges and schools is already there so there no no need to create new ones.They could be upgraded and automated.
Affiliation with Canbridge O and A Levels be delinked.Pakistani parents eke out millions of dollars every month to Cambridge University for British educational certificates which has had no effect on the education as a whole.
There should not be any revolutionary changes as suggested by some. One of them is increasing the salaries of the school teachers, some suggest by as much as 5 times. Such “revolutionary” steps may sound good to some but don’t really yield in the long run. People now even debate that had China not adopted the drastic one child policy, would its population had been any different. Some new research shows that it would not have been. Given the rising cost of living, the Chinese population would have increased by almost the same amount but there had been no problems of girls exceeding boys by 30 million.
Drastic and “revolutionary” changes bring more problems than solve them. So the approach should be gradual. No matter how much we criticize the government, schools have been built over time, but with a country with such a high population growth rate and so many other national and international issues to care about, it would have been difficult for any government to solve it. Gradually the stage would come when the rate of growth in schools would be large enough so that all kids could enrol in schools. But that would also require the population growth rate to go down, which it is.
Also the pay scales should be decided by the market and not fixed by the government like increasing the pay scales of school teachers by “5 times”. Giving more pay than what one deserves creates more problems than solve them. If the pay is raised by so much there would be glut of eligible teachers, and there is always over-supply of skills. Thus many would not be able to get jobs.
The same may happen in the higher education sector. With so many people going for PhD, there might not be as many jobs for them as they think there would be. The result would be un-employment among the PhDs, and the ensuing frustration and accepting low paying jobs at a lower level. That in my view is not very plausible. But that would be the result of “revolutionary” policies adopted by the previous government to produce MSc and PhDs. Sooner we learn to align education with the market the better. Else we should be prepared to face boom and bust cycles in education.
@Rohit
Numbers are deceptive and relative.If India has that large number of graduates or post graduates,it is relative to the population of about 1.2 billion.China has never revealed its numbers but if it were to have that media exposure as India has, then one is sure that it surpasses India big time in all sectors.
As I said,numbers are relative.Going by that yardstick India also has the world’s largest number of illiterate population(about 450 million),the largest concentration of beggars in a single country,the greatest number of pavement dwellers(150 million).These numbers are staggering but as I say they do not tell the whole story.
AA,
In my point of view I think that the biggest problem is the uneven distribution of this service. There are many areas where the children do not even have access to basic education. So as a priority I guess we should introduce public schools in most of the villages, which should offer till secondary school. After that the students should be capable to join the mainstream education for higher schooling such as O/A Level or Fsc.
The second step should be that, all those who cannot afford schooling should be provided free books or at least, make a library from which they can borrow and study from it. They should be provided free education at least till the secondary stage so that their parents can collect money till then for their higher education.
It is essential to have a basic curriculum which should be practiced in all schools. The govt should make use of all high qualified teachers from both private and public schools to get together to make the curriculum till class 8 which should be practiced everywhere around pakistan. I know Beaconhouse has been very efficient in this regard with competent people working there and designing a curriculum, the govt can ask for their help.
Lastly I propose that all the students, should be applicable for student loan. A team can be set up to review all those who should be granted this loan and are eligible for it, and should customize for the ones really in need to choose the specific way and time to pay it all back. Contributions from the local public can be made to raise these funds to provide them the loan along with govt subsidiaries.
But it has to be made sure that none of this is used to cater only specific class or group or the ethnic majority. Or the minorities will suffer and so will the poor, which is the main focus here. A specific qualified team should be made to check that all the decisions made are being implemented, so that there is no corruption. They should also be highly paid so that bribery is not an issue.
I see that everyone has been very active in arguing about issues of IIT etc but in my point of view I think that we are thinking way ahead and should focus on the basic education for the time being. As educated pakistani individuals we should focus on how can we contribute? which can be either financially or by providing our knowledge and teaching it to others.
Delink religion from academics