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Thursday March 28, 2024

How not to build a caste system 101

By Dr Ayesha Razzaque
January 03, 2021

The government is looking to replace the National Education Policy (NEP) 2009, with a new NEP. The draft NEP 2017 which was to run until 2025 was developed under the previous political government, but God forbid we let stand anything developed by a political rival’s government. The process of collecting policy proposals has begun.

A policy being considered, rather enthusiastically, proposes to “stream” students at the end of grade 8, using yet more standardized testing into two separate tracks – one for the academically inclined leading to college and university education, and another one leading to vocational training. This would cut off students from several career paths at only age 13 or 14.

Several studies, including the recent TIMSS 2019, have by now established that students from poorer households tend to lag behind academically. For a government that has been publicly proclaiming as its single policy objective the desire to erase class differences, such a policy would further cement the chasm between the haves and have-nots.

This proposal reminded me of the world in the 1997 sci-fi film ‘Gattaca.’ It is a world where people are subjected to genetic discrimination – those conceived naturally, without the benefits of corrective gene editing, are deemed at greater risk from genetic disorders, disqualified from good employment opportunities, and relegated to menial jobs only. Filtering students from future careers paths based on how they perform in a standardized test at the end of grade 8 sounds almost as bad. A lot of people I know did not hit their stride academically until they reached high school. This makes streaming children as early as age 14 unfair given the vast differences between the best and worst elementary, primary and middle schools. If children graduating from middle-school will now have to compete in a standardized test for a place in secondary and high school, that will put disadvantaged children at a higher probability of ending up being streamed into vocational subjects.

Several countries, more egalitarian than we will ever be, do stream students. Some as early as middle school, but the devil is in the details. Germany has a three-tier middle- and high-school system. Teachers of primary school students graduating grade 4 give non-binding advice to parents on what level school their child should go to next, but the decision is ultimately left to parents. There is the ‘Hauptschule’, which imparts students with functional education for life and puts them on a track to graduate from school at grade 10 and pick up a vocational trade (German vocational training is the world’s gold standard). They are not overburdened with more training than they will need.

The middle tier is the ‘Realschule’ which is a step above and teaches students about the reality of the world around them. At the end of grade 10, these students may either continue their education in the form of vocational training or switch to a top-tier high school, called the ‘Gymnasium’. Students of gymnasium schools are challenged academically, taught abstract concepts, and continue school all the way to grade 13 in preparation of joining a university program.

However, regardless of what type of middle or high school parents choose for their child, they retain the flexibility of levelling up or levelling down in any grade should their child’s academic performance or plans change. It is presently unclear if Pakistani students will have similar flexibility in the policy presently under consideration.

The German policy of having separate schools for separate streams is impractical in our context, where school infrastructure is already scarce. Will students opting for a vocation track be taught in separate classes at existing schools, or will the government set up entirely separate schools for them? Is it prepared to back this policy with the material and human resources it will require?

That unwillingness was the reason earlier policies to establish agro-tech and matric technical stream schemes in 2001-2002 fell on the face, only to be scrapped in 2008. The failure of that policy invited several independent studies. The government would do well to review the findings of those studies before embarking on the same path yet again. This time around, after compensating for the previous iteration’s failures, it should plan a phased roll-out, beginning with a well-planned pilot program, that puts vocational track programs in a limited number of schools where they are most economically relevant.

Giving students after grade 8 (age 13-14) an off-ramp towards vocational training is too early. Grade 10 (age 15-16) makes for a more reasonable age level. Diverting students at such a young age to the vocational track also brings up the question of liability for injuries and becomes even more problematic if part of that training is to be conducted as an apprenticeship.

Just because the path to vocational careers is made more explicit, that does not mean it will see the same success as, say, Germany’s. Any and all training programs need to be adequately staffed and resourced to produce useful graduates. If the provisioning of resources is confined to lofty language on paper, as has been the case for school education for decades, then vocational education will fare no better.

A significant reason that is often credited for the success of the German vocational training system is its strong coupling with a well-established system of apprenticeships. Apprenticeships are prerequisite on the availability of opportunities within commuting distance. With manufacturing concentrated in a few parts of the country, that is likely to leave a lot of aspiring apprentices in the rest of the country out in the cold.

The US takes a softer approach to streaming students by offering a wide variety of courses in high-school, catering to students on a wide spectrum of future plans but, unlike the German model, all within the same school. Core subjects include Math, English, Science, History, Foreign Languages, and Health. These are augmented by more subjects like Art, Music, Public Speaking, and academic electives like Psychology, Marine biology, Poetry, etc. Those wishing to enter the workforce early or elect for the vocational training route can choose from more hands-on subjects like wood-shop, auto mechanics, web design, graphic design, nursing, photography, physical education, etc.

Pushing more students onto the vocational training track comes with cultural baggage. Blue collar job puts one at the bottom of the totem pole. A while back, I met an experienced and qualified plumber / electrician in Karachi who is so good at his work and so successful in his small business that clients fly him to Islamabad for work, a testament to his skill. However, when it came to his own three sons, instead of capitalizing on his success and expanding the business, he preferred to have them work as white-collar clerical jobs in some office. Such is the societal stigma of a blue-collar job, regardless of how well it pays.

As things stand, technical and vocational education and training in Pakistan is an even bigger mess than school and higher education. To be successful, vocational training programs must be useful, productive, and be willingly chosen. The present proposal may create an illusion of choice when, in fact, the choice to proceed on an academic track leading to college was taken away from students years earlier when the primary and middle school they had access to was substandard. Putting them on a track widely considered ‘less’ will not solve any problem.

Contrary to the prime minister’s repeated pronouncements that the goal of this government’s education policy is to erase class differences, it will entrench and exacerbate the economic caste system even further. This newly discovered enthusiasm for vocational training will yield nothing but mostly unemployable graduates, like the school and university systems already do, if these plans are not backed up with necessary resources and workable plans.

An earlier proposal to a provincial education department to pilot vocational higher-secondary education met resistance because the planning officers, unwilling to work, argued that it did not fall within the department’s ‘official purview’ but under the Department of Industries, Commerce, and Technical Training. Such issues will make it challenging to create a coherent pathway. Unless the intersecting departments are on the same page and willing to coordinate, vocational training programs cannot improve, industry will remain disinterested and the policy will fall apart.

Every survey, every study, every report consistently points at the same two shortcomings in our school system – educated and motivated teachers, and a lack of basic facilities in schools. Once again, it seems we are considering doing anything and everything that can be done (on paper) – except what we know is necessary.

The writer is an independent education researcher and consultant. She has a PhD in Education from Michigan State University.