Is teaching a profession of choice?
Published in The Express Tribune on December 28, 2015
One of the most significant factors contributing to student success is the teacher and teaching quality. It is well-documented that a motivated, committed and qualified teacher can contribute hugely towards students’ improved learning outcomes. According to the Unesco Institute for Statistics, Pakistan would need to recruit another 523,100 teachers by 2030 if targets like universal primary and secondary ‘quality’ education outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals are to be achieved. Looking at the statistics, Pakistan is likely to have a shortage of qualified teachers in the future because not only is a huge portion of the current teaching force getting older, the potential labour market also does not perceive the teaching profession as a first-choice career option.
No Participation
Published in Dawn on December 9, 2015
Towards the end of December, budgetary re-appropriations, i.e., moving budgets from underspent heads to other account heads, will take place. Although there are some elementary efforts to include citizens in the budget-making process in Pakistan, there is no such avenue available when it comes to budget re-appropriations. Globally, avenues for citizens’ empowerment and listening to their voice in policymaking are being explored and implemented with reasonable success. However, public participation in more technical areas like budget-making, ensuring transparency in the process and more importantly holding governments accountable, is a nascent exercise.
Barriers to educating girls in Swat
Published in The Express Tribune on November 16, 2015
Even with significant strides at a global level towards achieving gender parity in all aspects of life, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa still faces a number of challenges in achieving gender equality in the education sector. Although improvements have been made by the government in this regard, obstacles that lie in the path of providing education for girls across the province are tremendous. According to a study conducted by Institute of Social and Policy Sciences, at the primary level in Swat district, gender parity increased from 67% (67 girls for every 100 boy) in 2008-09 to 93% in 2013-14. However, the same could not be said for middle and higher school education where the rate only increased from 43% to 54% in those six years.
Teachers without borders
Published in The Express Tribune on November 14, 2015
Rather than spending billions on existing professional development programmes that may not be serving teachers well, some resources can be diverted to help teachers participate in learning communities. The government should encourage the development of personal learning networks for teachers by advocating their benefits and conducting sessions to train them to use technology. Such sessions are vital, as although many of our teachers may understand the benefits of new methods of learning, they might feel handicapped in operating the technology for this purpose. It is time that developing countries like ours adopt re-engineered professional development models for teachers, like online learning communities available on social media. This is one of the faster, effective and relatively more interactive solutions to the problems affecting quality of teaching in Pakistan.
Teacher training in the private sector
Published in The Express Tribune on October 29, 2015
The public education sector invests significant amounts on teacher training programmes as in 2015-16, a combined budget of around Rs8.3 billion has been earmarked under this head in the four provinces. However, when it comes to private sector schools, there is generally no provision for such training programmes and for teacher development. I have been a teacher in the private sector for about a decade, six years of which were in a very renowned Islamabad-based institute. During these 10 years, I never went through a single teacher training programme. I not only speak for myself, but also on behalf of hundreds of other teachers working in private schools who I personally know. Although enjoying advantages in many other areas and aspects, there is a general lack of growth opportunities for teachers in the private sector; a lot worse than the public sector.
Investing in teacher quality
Published in The Express Tribune on October 5, 2015
This year, the Punjab government has allocated pre-service and in-service teacher training budgets of Rs1.26 billion and Rs3.19 billion respectively, showing a respective increase of five per cent and nine per cent over last year’s budget allocation. Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has allocated a budget of Rs303.74 million for pre-service teacher training, highlighting an increase of five per cent in comparison with the allocated budget in 2014-15. On the other hand, a budget of Rs891.62 million has been earmarked for in-service teacher training in the province, presenting a decline of 15 per cent compared with the Rs1.05 billion allocated budget in 2014-15. Sindh has allocated pre-service and in-service teacher training budgets of Rs907.81 million and Rs858.03 million. Comparing this with the allocated budget in 2014-15, this represents an increase of 15 per cent and 53 per cent respectively. Earmarking an increase of 11 per cent and seven per cent respectively, Balochistan has allocated a budget of Rs454.04 million and Rs436.92 million for pre-service and in-service teacher training in 2015-16.
Budget transparency and accountability
Published in Dawn on September 21, 2015
One of the key weaknesses identified for the failure to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was the unavailability of sufficient budgetary information to monitor the needed financing to achieve the targets and to hold governments accountable for the results. This weakness has also been reiterated in the recent Open Budget Survey 2015 report by the International Budget Partnership, which reveals large gaps in the amount of budgetary information that governments make available to the public. Covering 102 countries, the survey is the largest comparative assessment of the three components of a well-functioning budget accountability ecosystem: transparency, public participation and oversight.
Ranking Peshawar: Actionable evidence on state of schools in city
Published in The Express Tribune on September 18, 2015
The education sector of Peshawar is faced with perennial challenges. The district has around 0.6 million out-of-school children. Those who are enrolled in government schools do not demonstrate strong learning outcomes. A number of schools in the district do not have adequate basic facilities like electricity and clean drinking water. Their classrooms are overcrowded with multi-grade teaching undertaken in several schools. The Institute of Social and Policy Sciences evaluated the government schools of Peshawar, dividing it into its 11 constituencies. The rankings were based on two scales: quality of education (education score) and the state of basic facilities (school score).
Backseat no more; education finance increasing in budget
Published in The Express Tribune on August 24, 2015
In this year’s budget, a total of Rs. 734 billion had been allocated for education, which presents an increase of 15% compared with the previous year’s allocated budget. In the last three years, the combined education budget for the federal government and provinces has increased significantly by 27%, from Rs. 580 billion in 2013-14 to Rs. 734 billion in 2015-16. The educational challenge faced by Pakistan can be dubbed enormous to say the least with around 25 million children out of schools, literacy rate hovering around 58%, huge number of schools without basic facilities and poor learning outcomes of those enrolled.
Dilapidated school buildings need urgent repair
Published in Dawn on July 4, 2015
There is growing evidence from across the globe that the condition of school infrastructure has a strong impact on learning outcomes of students. Considering that the learning outcomes in Pakistan are below par according to the World Bank report on ‘Student Learning in South Asia’, there is an even greater need of addressing the infrastructural challenges in our schools. It is also disturbing to note that despite hefty allocations for infrastructural needs in Punjab, many schools are still running with buildings partially or critically damaged. According to the School Education Department statistics, currently more than 800 school buildings in the province are critically dangerous whereas around 3,800 are partially damaged.
Punjab education budget
Published in The Nation on June 23, 2015
The education budget for the Punjab, as a share of the total budget has declined considerably. Punjab government on Friday announced a balanced budget of Rs. 1,447.42 billion, registering an increase of 40 percent over the ongoing fiscal year’s budget. The education budget saw an increase of Rs. 50.6 billion in 2015-16, a significant rise of 19.5 per cent over the allocated budget in 2014-15. The amount of Rs. 310.2 billion earmarked for education in 2015-16 constitutes 21.4 percent of the total provincial budget for Punjab; going down from 24 percent in 2014-15. The percentage share of education in Punjab’s overall budget has gone down from 26 percent in 2013-14 to 21.4 percent in 2015-16.
The state of teacher recruitment in Pakistan
Published in The Express Tribune on May 1, 2015
The quality of teaching is directly linked to the way students learn and then perform in their achievement tests. Therefore, it is no mystery that the learning outcomes of students in Pakistan are below par. So, the question to ponder over is how to improve the equality of teaching trainings, pre-service and in-service both; the starting point to improve the quality of teaching is to make the recruitment process transparent and selection merit based. However, the state of teacher recruitment in Pakistan has not been encouraging in the past as political interference, nepotism, ghost teachers and non-transparent practices dominate the process. It is encouraging to note that recent efforts have been made in all the provinces to improve matters.
State of education financing in Pakistan
Published in The Express Tribune on March 27, 2015
There is no denying the fact that the focus on education has enhanced in the recent years with the federal and provincial governments now focusing more on enrolling out-of-school children, providing basic facilities, teachers rationalization, achieving targets like higher literacy rates, reducing gender disparity and spending higher proportion of budgets on education. However, a lot still needs to be done in this regard as there still exist huge infrastructural backlogs; many schools function with more teachers than needed and on the contrary many schools work with lesser teachers than required; and the learning outcomes are much lower than the desired ones.