Winds of change

Having a law for the right to free education for every child between the ages of five and 16 and not devising its rules of business is just like installing a complete sanitation system but without any taps to deliver water to the recipient, commented Ahmad Ali, an educational researcher and a senior fellow at the Institute of Social and Policy Sciences.
“If you don’t have a system of delivery for implementing the law, then it merely becomes a collection of words on paper,” he added.
However, he explained, other significant aspects of the whole exercise were also connected with devising the Rules of Business.
“Once the government starts working on the delivery system of imparting education, it will also have to take stock of the available resources and plan their usage while also assessing how much more resources it would require to not only ensure delivery but also improve it with time.”
On the other hand, the Pearl’s crew apparently is doing just that, but in the reverse order. Last month, the curriculum wing of the education and literacy department came up with a comprehensive curriculum implementation framework that provides specific guidelines for the dissemination of educational policies and targets to the local education officials and stakeholders.
The goal is, according to Ejaz Shah, the technical adviser to the curriculum wing, to ensure quality and access went hand-in-hand. “If you give access of education to millions of children and they don’t learn anything, then the whole exercise and resources are wasted,” he said.
“First we are trying to streamline the system to cater to the educational needs of the province. The recruitment of management cadre officers and NTS-tested teachers are part of these efforts.”
He said complete and thorough arrangements were required to be able to provide equitable access of education to children of the province.
So at present, he added, the department was trying to remove the kinks in the system and take stock of the resources and understanding the educational landscape of the country. “It’s extremely important to bring all the relevant officials and stakeholders on the same page and complete our own homework for achieving the goal of providing free and fair education,” he said. “Once that has been achieved, the Rules of Business would enable smooth functioning of the system of education delivery as a whole. Otherwise, it too would get caught in red-tapism.”

Relying on the winds
Mehtab Akbar Rashidi, a former journalist who is now an MPA of the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional and has also served as the secretary education, said it was wrong to rely so much on foreign aid.
“I, for one, would not mind seeing donors disappear because then it would be the authorities themselves searching for solutions to their own problems instead of others telling them what to do and how to do it,” she said.
“So much of what is being done is driven by foreign donors and their policies are applied blindly without any thought as to whether or not they would sit well in the local environment. This is reflected in the ad hoc way used in dealing with matters so far.”
Except for a couple of times a year in the provincial assembly, debate on education and related matters remains absent even though it is perhaps the biggest challenge facing the country.
The assembly’s standing committee on education too remains without anything to do. Though it is merely an advisory body and can only take up matters if they are referred to it, the department can unload some of its deliberations on the committee especially because it is critically short of qualified personnel. “The secretariat never consults us while making decisions,” said a member quite candidly. “Though the committee only has an advisory role, but it’s still a legitimate forum to discuss issues.”
According to Ahmad Ali, the implementation of Article 25-A is also a great way to address a myriad of other important issues in Sindh, such as the rural-urban divide. “The province needs to come up with a clear-cut and clean strategy for its implementation,”he said.
“The implementation of Article 25-A should reflect in all policy documents, whether they are financial or administrative, and disseminated to the public and the relevant education officials.”