Education in Pakistan Role of Management & Policy Makers

Education has played the foremost role in development of modern society. The world, during the last three decades, has witnessed an enormous amount of growth in all walks of life especially the technological and economic areas. The primary reason behind all this shift has been the smart investment in education. Education is a process that involves the transfer of knowledge, skills, cultural norms, and values from one generation to another. The transfer of knowledge takes place through formal and informal setups. The best and the easiest method is being the formal or institutional setup.

Human capital is essential for economic growth as rightfully educated workforce ensures sustainability in both economic and technological growth. Education has played a paramount role in the modern industrial world. This is attributed to the fact prospective employees must be educated and skilled adequately to perform various tasks in modern organizations. To maintain consistency and standardization, formal educational setups adopt a curriculum. A dynamic and flexible curriculum enables the individuals to adapt rapidly changing trends in the environment. Prospective employees must possess the required skills and knowledge that correspond with the current technology to perform their tasks which poses the most important challenge of having an updated, globally competitive, and easy to adopt curriculum in our educational institutions at all levels. The main concern in Pakistan has been the absence of a standardized system. Multiple systems are being used at levels of education. We have not been able to develop and implement a uniform policy for both private and public institutions. We have yet to achieve uniformity among English and Urdu medium curriculum in the country. This has been the main reason behind highly variable outcomes in the form of graduates at all levels. As a result, our curriculum is neither updated nor consistent to compete with the rest of the world. It has no direct connection with the practical life which the students will have to face after the completion of their formal education. Ironically, the education performance of Pakistan is far below when we compare it with other developing countries in the world. Pakistan lags behind in its literacy rate among the other South Asian countries. According to a report developed by James Coffman-Executive Director of the U.S. Educational Foundation in Pakistan; “Pakistani governments have never given high priority to the educational sector, (education is not even compulsory), spending a smaller percentage of its national budget on education than any of its poor South Asian neighbors.”

Lack of technical education is another challenge in our country. A number of educational policies have been introduced from time to time by various regimes in the history of Pakistan for reforms but due to lack of implementation and inconsistency, there were no results. When we talk about budget allocation for education, Pakistan is one of only twelve countries in the world that spend less than three percent of its GDP on education. Another important reason contributing to the below average outcome in our educational system is poorly trained faculty. New techniques of teaching and materials to make classroom delivery more interesting for the students have not been adopted. One of the chronic problems of our education system is the shortage of teachers. The teacher student ratio is still below par which hinders the achievement of quality in education delivery mechanism.

Research has proven that teacher quality is the single biggest influence on student engagement and achievement. Teachers play a vital role in improving student performance. Teacher preparation and the early years of teaching experience are critical in developing effective teachers. To improve classroom practice and get the best teachers in every educational institution, we need to attract the right people into teaching, give them the best possible training, and support them as they move into the classroom. That is why teacher quality should be the main focus of the government to enhance the quality of education and hence to produce the best human resources for all industrial sectors.

The primary goal of today’s teachers should be to remain up-to-date on the increasing amount of pedagogical and content area research. Educators must keep abreast of the important advances that are occurring in their respective fields. This is where professional development should be the focus for both policy makers and the management of educational institutions. Professional development is defined as “the process of improving staff skills and competencies needed to produce outstanding educational results for students” (Hassel, 1999). Professional development is a key to meeting today’s educational demands. High-quality professional development strategies are essential to institutions. We are now moving towards more effective and more engaging professional development models. Research and experience help us recognize the need for high-quality ongoing professional development programs in order to develop teachers’ content knowledge and pedagogical skills. Such programs will provide opportunities for practice, research, and reflection; and include efforts that are job embedded, sustained, and collaborative. There is mounting evidence that the quality of teachers is the key ingredient to student performance. Unfortunately, the characteristics of good teachers are not described well, making it impossible to legislate or regulate good teachers. The largest problem that we see in current system is the lack of incentives for improved student performance. Neither students nor institutional management in most cases tend to be significantly rewarded for high performance. Without such incentives, it is no surprise to find that added resources do not consistently go towards improvement of student outcomes.

If institutions are held responsible for results, they must have the ability to make decisions that will lead to better outcomes. Highly centralized regulatory systems simply cannot work effectively without broad knowledge of what programs are effective in different situations. In conclusion, education is the only means to increase productivity, achieve economic growth, and improve human living standards. The policy makers should develop a uniform curriculum and outcome based programs for both public and private institutions. We must also understand that increased allocation of budget for education alone might not produce the desired output. It should be rather invested strategically with clear goals, desired outcomes, and future plans in mind. The policy makers should also develop and implement faculty development programs to have a sustainable quality output. These might not be all, but the above mentioned initiatives will definitely steer the wheel towards a road to sustainable growth.