Salvaging the SNC

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

The primary school Single National Curriculum (SNC) is complete. The curriculum documents were finalized last year, and the model textbooks were written and approved earlier this year and are now in print (already printed in Punjab).

Good or bad, the primary school SNC is coming to public schools in Punjab, Khyber and the federal territory this Fall. Next year it will be the turn of middle school grades 6 to 8. While the middle school SNC is also finalized, the job of writing textbooks has yet to begin.

The rollout of the primary school SNC has been chaotic. The religious Right, after loading up the SNC with religious content, has gone back on their commitment of adopting it for madrassahs, which means there is no longer a ‘single’ curriculum as was initially planned. The devolution of education to provinces under the 18th Amendment and Sindh’s refusal and Balochistan’s lack of readiness to adopt it means the SNC is no longer ‘national’ either.

Finally, the fact that the SNC is not actually a curriculum at all, a fact that had to be pointed out by members of the public before its proponents shifted to describing it as a set of minimum standards, means it is not a ‘curriculum’ either. That makes the SNC, literally, a complete misnomer.

At this point, the middle school SNC textbooks are yet to be developed and work on the high-school SNC is about to begin. That means now is a good time to reflect on the shortcomings in the development of the primary school SNC, learn from them and identify action items to salvage as much of the remaining SNC project as possible.

First of all, the SNC is content-heavy. A review of the middle school SNC (available publicly) found that it contains 350 percent more SLOs than that of a foreign curriculum widely used in Pakistan’s best private schools. You may think a large number of lesson items is a good thing – but it is not. The result will be either cognitive overload or a wide range of topics that receive only shallow treatment, not teaching anything useful in depth. Such a curriculum becomes just a hodgepodge of disjointed, poorly covered topics.

This approach has been a feature of government textbooks (including SNC for primary grades) for years. Since I am not a subject expert, I asked my daughter, an A-level valedictorian on her way to study life sciences at a top-20 university, to go through the current PCTB grades X and XII biology textbooks and chapters on biotechnology in detail. Her assessment was that the textbooks are ‘excessively wordy’, topical coverage is superficial and shallow, often spending entirely too much time on history. In the chapters on biotechnology, she assessed they cover roughly 40 percent of what she just studied in A-level biology. These are the current textbooks, not the ones based on the SNC, but we should expect little improvement. If a good student can identify such substantial differences and weaknesses, why can the people writing and reviewing these books not do the same?

Resist the temptation to introduce new subjects when the same skills can be imparted by updating existing ones. More subjects mean more class periods and teachers (which means most schools will opt out) and a more siloed rather than interdisciplinary curriculum, a stated goal of the SNC. I made this point analyzing the SNC for Computer Studies – a new elective subject introduced for middle school (The News, April 25).

Second, a lot of criticism of primary school SNC textbooks has centered on the inclusion of religious content in subjects other than Islamiat, particularly Urdu. To be perfectly clear, this issue predates the SNC by decades. However, it has come to the public fore because the same minority rights activists that the government claimed to have consulted last year are aghast now that the model textbooks are out and those of compulsory subjects infringe on the constitutional rights of children and teachers of faiths other than Islam. This is not as simple as inclusion of an innocent ‘Hamd’ and ‘Naat’ here and there, but the fact that even English and Urdu textbooks carry many instances where the content clearly and emphatically establishes Muslim belief and tenets.

A case filed by minority rights advocates is currently in the Supreme Court of Pakistan and is challenging the inclusion of religious instructions in compulsory subjects (all subjects other than Islamiat) on the basis that it violates the rights of non-Muslim students and teachers enshrined in article 22(1) of the constitution of Pakistan – “No person attending any educational institution shall be required to receive religious instruction... if such instruction, ceremony or worship relates to a religion other than his own.”

Conflating the issue of infringement of minority rights in compulsory subjects with the issue of teaching of Quran and Islamiat as separate subjects (often justified citing articles 227 and 31 of the constitution and the 2017 act of parliament) is deflection and diversion and risks further persecution of minorities.

Similarly, conflating the issue of inclusion of Islamic content in compulsory subjects with many lofty (often exaggerated) claims of ‘respect and appreciation for different cultures and religions in local and global contexts’ is misleading and amounts to disinformation. Diversionary tactics like these only hurt the cause of the SNC and the credibility of those making such claims.

Avoiding similar legal challenges for middle and high-school grades is straightforward: As I pointed out in an earlier op-ed in the News dated April 27, 2021 “the list of authors and reviewers of model textbooks is composed solely of members of the majority community”. Make the process of textbook development and review more inclusive by engaging members of other faiths. Give clear instructions to textbook authors and reviewers to adhere to constitutional requirements and restrict all religious lessons, both explicit and implicit, in Islamiat textbooks only.

Third, since textbook boards have demonstrated over the last few decades that they are incapable of developing textbooks that keep up with the state-of-the-art, it may be time for them to bow out of this business entirely and limit their role to setting standards and, together with boards of education, conducting exams. By extricating itself from the textbook business, it would open up the public-school textbook market to competition.

I realize that this proposal is a long shot, but if it seems like too much of a departure from recent precedent, know that Cambridge Assessments International Examinations, which conducts the IGCSE, O/A-Level exams around the world, operates the same way. It develops syllabi, sets standards, conducts standardized assessments and certifies textbooks but leaves the job of developing textbooks to the competitive market of publishers.

A free-market approach to developing textbooks will also give schools choices to select from more or less expensive textbooks and supplementary instructional materials, depending on what best suits the community the school is serving, and bring much needed innovation. If textbooks boards are adamant to develop their own ‘model’ textbooks, they may continue to do so and go head-to-head with private-sector competitors and let the market decide if their product is any good.

In conclusion, I would advise government departments to consider that the members of the public that are following their work are mostly non-partisan. Refrain from issuing defensive knee-jerk statements flat-out denying all problems when there is clear evidence to the contrary, or deflect genuine criticism by responding to questions no one asked, or conflate issues to divert attention (as happened again on Tuesday, June 22, 2021).

Many people that are identifying issues, sometimes months in advance, are doing so not to score political points or because their paycheck depends on it. They are freely offering their insight and expertise because they are genuinely interested in seeing meaningful education reforms, are hoping for positive change and would hate to see yet another opportunity squandered.

There is still time to do the SNC right for high school years. There is still time to do the textbooks right for middle schools. There is still time in the next two years to even redo the primary school SNC and textbooks right. And there is still time for even bolder reforms like opening up the textbook market to competition, bringing in choices, fresh ideas and much needed innovation to public schools. There is still time to salvage the SNC project.