Incentives, class, unions & reform

There is no chance whatsoever of substantial reform of any element of the Pakistani state without the active participation and ownership of government employees. This seems a simple enough proposition but its implications are wide-ranging and touch on everything from ideology to class to basic fiscal rationality – or the lack thereof.
The largest share of government employees, bar none, is made up of public school teachers. No discussion about administrative, public sector or civil service reform can be complete without at least a cursory understanding of teachers, teachers’ unions and the various constraints against and imperatives for reform in education.
At least rhetorically, no one denies the importance of education. But when the question of teachers arises, reformists tend to balk. Engaging public-sector teachers is a difficult and complex challenge. When AlifAilaan, the DfID-funded education campaign that I work on, thought about this challenge we reached out to three people with the deepest knowledge of the issues.
Baela Raza Jamil of the Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA), Faisal Bari of the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives (IDEAS) and Salman Humayun of the Institute for Social and Policy Sciences (I-SAPS) represent three diverse but authoritative voices on education reform. Between them, they have both the academic rigour and the practical experience necessary to bring depth and substance to any discussion on issues in education.
All three agreed to lead our thinking about engaging with teachers. It was clear from the outset that any conversation about better teacher performance or improved learning outcomes would be compromised without the participation of teachers’ unions.
We commissioned a research study on teachers’ unions. While these unions manifest themselves in negative ways in the news media occasionally, there is scant, if any, real data on what the teachers’ unions are, who they represent and what they really want.
Finally, we spoke to senior government officials in all four provinces to ensure they understood why an education campaign was seeking to engage with teachers’ unions. This was especially important in Sindh and Punjab, where the current relationship between government and teachers is particularly fraught.
Alhamdolillah, after approximately six months of work, including three months of intensive engagement, at the Qaumi Asataza Conference on December 26 we were able to convene a historic assembly of over 375 teachers’ union representatives from all four provinces as well as Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), and Islamabad.
To an extent, the gathering alone was an important milestone. But the gathering also opened up channels of thought and action for us. I wanted to share these with our readers as reflections not just about education but more broadly about the complexity of the challenge faced by those among us who are genuinely interested in an improved Pakistani state.
Most striking was the adoption of the ‘Meesaq-e-Ilm’. The Meesaq is a normative framework for teaching in Pakistan, drafted by the teachers’ unions themselves, with Ali fAilaan serving as facilitator. Baela Raza Jamil, Faisal Bari and Salman Humayun, as well as Ahmad Ali of I-SAPS, played a vital role in fact- and reality-checking the Meesaq, but it was essentially the synthesis of what teachers themselves consider to be their responsibilities and what teachers need to be able to fulfil those responsibilities.
One of the fears some of our partners and friends expressed on learning about our plans for this conference was that teachers’ unions would use the opportunity of being in Islamabad and having access to a national platform to only discuss issues related to their service conditions. What we found instead was a genuine desire to define the teaching profession within the context of teachers’ role in society and in the shaping of Pakistan’s future.
As teachers from across the country read out the Meesaq-e-Ilm, union leaders decided there and then to sign a copy and present it to Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal, who attended the session as guest of honour.
This outreach by the unions to the government confounded many people’s expectations. The reason is simple. Unions have come to be seen as purely adversarial groups interested in protests and shouting matches. Yet, at the Qaumi Asataza Conference, we saw the most powerful unions in the country stepping up and offering a range of normative declarations about what they should do to improve their own performance.
The lesson from this spontaneous decision to express solidarity with society as a whole, and to be viewed as agents of positive change, should not be lost on reformers in any sector. Political power is moderated by the need for political groups to remain politically viable.
Teachers’ unions cannot afford to be seen as anti-reform, largely because they recognise that no one believes the status quo to be acceptable. This means that as long as there is general consensus about the need for reform in a given sector, trade unions that are often seen as obstacles to reform in that sector have an institutional incentive to at least appear to be pro-reform. That is a pretty good starting point.
Another lesson we gleaned from the conference is also perhaps very salient social commentary, and comes from a statement made by a teachers’ union representative from central Punjab. The comment was captured beautifully in the episode of ‘Jirga’ that anchor and journalist Saleem Safi recorded at the conference. Put simply, this union rep dared the Punjab government to get rid of teachers. His challenge was informed by one of the purest and most honest moments you’ll ever witness at a conference. He said that it isn’t the children of the rich and famous who will come to replace this crop of “so-called rotten” government school teachers.
It will ultimately be the children of those teachers themselves, the less privileged in society, who will be interested in government teaching jobs. The rich and famous have no interest in government teaching jobs. His comments served both as a marvellous bit of political theatre and an intriguing proposition about class in Pakistan.
The honesty of the comment lies in the way this teacher saw his role in society – existing at the lower (though not lowest) end of the class structure but vital to the sustenance of the social framework upon which the upper classes depend for social order and coherence.
The purity of the comment lies in its truth. Upper class, elite, wealthy, privileged – we can use whatever language we want, but basically very few, if any, English-speaking Pakistanis have a stake in the primary and middle education on offer in government schools in Pakistan. This holds true not only for the increasingly common refrain of the class divide, as reflected in where our children attend school. It also holds true for the less common assertion, made by the teacher from central Punjab, which exposes where our teachers teach.
The government school, as an ecosystem, is completely outside the ecosystem of privileged Pakistanis. The only time these two ecosystems interact is at events that force an unnatural and inorganic confluence: sometimes in the shape of teachers’ union protests, sometimes where chief guests attend government school functions. Rarely, however, does it include any forums where substantive policy debate or discussion takes place. The almost complete separation of stakeholders like teachers from the debate around education is a troubling reminder of why we have made such little progress in changing the state of education in Pakistan. The Qaumi Asataza Conference and the Meesaq-e-Ilm are a first step towards bridging this divide.
Over the next several weeks and months, I will revisit this issue and report back on what, if any, progress has been made on implementing the commitments formalised in the Meesaq-e-Ilm.
The writer is an analyst and commentator.