In 2006, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego hosted a conference. Among the speakers was Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium.
During one of his presentations, he narrated his experience of taking a survey course in Arts and Design while studying Physics at Harvard College, a liberal arts school. At one time, students were given a heap of pumpkins and assigned to draw them with charcoal. After weeks of drawing pumpkins, the class was told (to the bewilderment of Tyson, who had a science background), “Don’t draw the pumpkins. Draw the space between the pumpkins!”
While the media is still abuzz with coverage of the changes the 27th Amendment to the constitution of Pakistan has wrought, it is also worth studying the amendment’s negative space – items that were reportedly part of early negotiations but were not included in its final form. Of key interest to me among them was the rollback of the recentralisation of powers from the federal government to the provinces, particularly the subject of education.
Early drafts of the 27th Amendment included a reversal of the devolution of education in the 18th Amendment. However, there were many more ‘pressing’ issues at stake – like restructuring the judiciary and the military at the top, and granting the president lifetime immunity from criminal prosecution etc. It appears that the recentralisation of education and other items were included as bargaining chips to be given away as concessions, a fig leaf, in return for support on higher priorities.
Before the 18th Amendment was passed in 2010, education was a shared subject and on the Concurrent Legislative List – that is: both provincial and federal governments were allowed to legislate on it. Constructing and managing schools, recruiting, training and transferring teachers, publishing textbooks (an activity of interest because it involved large contracts), budgeting and organising and conducting examinations. Provinces even had limited say in the curriculum, largely handed down by the Curriculum Wing of the then Ministry of Education, such as the addition of local languages, the choice of medium of instruction and minor tweaks.
Control over the curriculum was a key part of school education and was held by the federal government. More specifically, within the curriculum, Pakistan Studies (the officially sanctioned and severely truncated version of history), Social Studies and Islamiat (used as a national binding agent) were probably of primary interest. Ideological messaging can also be found embedded in Urdu and, to a lesser degree, in English subjects. Under this arrangement, innovation in the public school curriculum remained limited by the imagination and talent of the Curriculum Wing – a single point of control but also a single point of failure.
Fifteen years ago, the 18th Amendment gave provinces control over their schools’ curriculum. It is not an overstatement to say that all provinces, without exception, have disappointed. Provinces showed no interest in taking ownership of their children’s education and, for a whole decade, could not be bothered to build indigenous capacity to develop their own curricula and supporting learning materials. School curricula essentially coasted for a decade, until the PTI government began rolling out the heavily criticised, bloated and compromised Single National Curriculum (SNC) in 2019-2020.
Since then, the SNC has undergone a rebranding to become the National Curriculum of Pakistan (NCP) under the PDM/PML-N government. Provinces had the opportunity to take control of their own education, yet they largely chose to sit on their hands. That is why when the federal government pushed SNC / NCP textbooks onto provinces, many just took them.
Hundreds of studies over the last half-century have shown that education, especially primary education, has to be offered in children’s first language, and that means options beyond Urdu and English. Students who speak a language other than Urdu and English at home go to schools and are taught in a language that is effectively foreign to them, with the notable exception of Sindh, where Sindhi is taught in schools. This could have been addressed in the last 15 years, but it wasn’t.
Federal and provincial corridors of power are animated by either money or power. In education, the money can be made in publishing textbooks. Provinces already had control over that even before the 18th Amendment, but there is no money-making opportunity in curriculum design. Hence, a complete lack of interest from provinces.
Returning curriculum design to the federal government would put it officially back in control of building national identity. This goal may be motivated by BLA attacks in Balochistan, TTP / TTA in KP, both egged on and supported by our eastern neighbour, attempting to fan the flames of ethno-nationalism, and also the sporadic violence and disruption inflicted by the TLP in Punjab. Additionally, in KP, there is a lack of resolve by the provincial government to take on the threat and a stubborn unwillingness to admit the error of its past policy of appeasement of the Taliban.
After more than 20 years, the realisation that there are no good Taliban may have finally sunk in everywhere else in the country. This situation may have rekindled a lukewarm desire to remodulate key messages in the hidden curriculum. That is what control over the curriculum offers and what some power centres in or near the federal government may wish to wield again.
I cannot argue for central or even a distant authority’s control over school curriculum in a large and diverse country such as ours. Punjab’s capital, Lahore, is a long way from Multan. Life in Karachi bears little resemblance to that in Sukkur, just like Peshawar is many ways off from Hazara. The only idea worse than putting bureaucracies in provincial capitals in charge of school curricula across large and diverse provinces is to give the job to an even more distant bureaucracy in Islamabad.
Contrast our present, still too centralised, approach to that of the US in many areas, including education. There, the 50 states are sometimes described as 50 labs, each developing its own solution to its challenges. Over time, states that are on the wrong track can learn from states that fared better. In the matter of school education, states primarily set standards and frameworks, while the curriculum is designed and implemented by school districts and boards at the local level.
What is needed is further devolution of education down to the district level. However, if provinces have been unable to build expertise for curriculum development in the rather long time they had. Then, under the current circumstances, it is even less likely that districts can accomplish this for themselves. The hope was for provinces to at least make an honest attempt to exercise the authority the 18th Amendment had granted them. Instead, all we got was inaction.
There being no more money to be made, no interest in the influence it wields and neither will nor capacity to improve the delivery of public education for the people, it has been reduced to a negotiation sweetener. Reverting control of education back to the centre was not high enough on the list of priorities this time. It remains to be seen if that changes by the time the 28th Amendment rolls around, which may not be a long time off.
The writer (she/her) has a PhD in Education.
