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Tuesday March 19, 2024

Taming the beast

By our correspondents
November 29, 2015
Dealing with education challenges meaningfully has never been easy for any country, especially poverty stricken or conflict ridden. Besides these two, Pakistan has its own dynamics, making the provision of quality education an insurmountable challenge. This is compounded by the fact that the country’s cultural norms are chiseled with religions dictums, effectively banning education for girls while economic strain in poor families prevents boys from going to schools.
The recent news of the Pakistan’s Prime Minister’s Education Initiative, holds strategic value for engaging world leaders and comes at the right time, especially when a global lobby on education is clamoring for Pakistan to “do more” on the education front. The first lady of the United States and Malala Yousafzai are bonding closely to launch Michelle Obama’s campaign on girls’ education. The US and the UK announced their $200 million collaboration to advance education for adolescent girls around the world, especially in crisis and conflict countries.
The reigns of the PM’s Education initiative may have been handed over to the dynamic and emerging politician, Maryam Nawaz. Now the question is, how will she change the practices and current situation? Michelle Obama inspires others with a personal twist to the importance of girl’s education and presents a firm vision by stating that there would be more girls in board rooms. On the other hand, the 18 year old Malala pronounced the need for education in her words: “It is a book and a pen that can change the life of a child, it’s not a gun.” Now that Maryam Nawaz will be unifying on the same stance with the world’s most prominent figures on education, she ought to come up with a result oriented and a visionary statement, a statement that propels courage and enthusiasm to generate new knowledge and workable models for developing countries.
Since the passage of the 18th Amendment, the Federation has taken a back seat on education, and this hasn’t helped the cause of education at budgetary or at the operational level. During the recent visit to the United States, Maryam Nawaz was convincing enough to get an investment of $70 million that will benefit two million adolescent girls in Pakistan, out of the US First Lady’s education initiative fund. This augurs well in terms of fostering collaboration and will serve as seed money for projects.
The PM’ s initiative seems to have been hurriedly sculpted to meet the need of the political hour . The implementation of which might frustrate the outcome as it appears to lack innovation and creativity. Too much emphasis is on digital ubiquity, which requires constant technology based resource injection. High end and high tech is not the only answer to our problem. Neither is education about numbers of students. Education is about measuring what we value. We want these children to live and contribute in the complex world. We want dignity for teachers in traditional sense of the “Ustad” and raise their standard of living and expertise. We want girls and boys to be productive, honest Pakistanis and not just literate. Although the PM Education initiative tried to bring in a philosophy ahead of its time, with ideas like biometric attendance system. Other aspects of the program are run of the mill sort of political promises and have been on the agenda of unsuccessful endeavors by the Ministry of Education, such as up-gradation of physical infrastructure, logistical planning including transport, teacher competency and a new body as an Education Advisory Council for Islamabad public sector schools.
The US First Lady’s education initiative fund will be implemented through USAID in Pakistan. However, a point to note is that during the Pakistan Peoples Party’s Government, Punjab was the stand-alone province where Shehbaz Sharif had boycotted aid by the US. This brought much credibility to Shehbaz Sharif’s education reform initiative. Although many are of the view that the money is much required especially in bringing about qualitative and quantitative improvements in the country’s education system.
Maryam Nawaz can build on the lessons learnt from Punjab’s recent education sector reform program which is described as “good news” by Sir Michael Barber, Department for International Development’s special representative for education in Pakistan. Besides innovative policy injections, practical features are worthy of mention such as monitoring of teacher presence, functioning facilities at school level, cash stipends for girls and well-designed implementation unit. The latest Annual Status of Education Report, which assessed over 60,000 children from all Punjab districts, reveals significant gains in learning outcomes for both literacy and numeracy. Pakistan stands at cross roads, where age old processes and practices need to be revamped to into successful modern models of development and only then we can fulfill our constitutional obligations and other content essential to nurture national identity
Can PM’s new focus really optimize the opportunity and put spotlight on “non-quantitative” measures as well. We have seen in the past politically motivated programs have little focus on the long term and sustainable elements.
She can inspire a sound plan that will focus on:
* Transforming the learning design that serves the current needs of students. Most inherent component of this is learning outcome factors;
* Institutionalizing evaluations processes;
* overhaul low-performing schools;
* Most importantly, set up doable milestones accordingly
Education is a tall order and refutes standardized approach. Can Maryam Nawaz really tame the beast? (The author is an advocate, a human rights activist & development expert)