Revamping education

Since Musharraf came to power in 1999, the government has taken several measures that indicate its realization of the significance of education to develop the country into an enlightened and progressive nation. While addressing an international conference ‘Future of Schools and Education’ in Islamabad, President Musharraf admitted that the country’s education system was in a “shameful” state and needed to be revamped. In the present situation, it seems uncertain whether Pakistan will be able achieve the UN millennium development goals of achieving universal primary enrolment by 2015.Pakistan ranks 135 out of 177 countries on the human development index of the UNDP and has one of the highest dropout rates in primary education in South Asia. This is especially true in the rural areas. The reasons for this state of affairs are not hard to understand. Nearly 40 percent of our population lives below the poverty line. Most of the parents are not persuaded of the importance of education and view it more from the perspective of employment and earnings. They find it more useful to apprentice their children to contribute towards the meagre family income immediately. It is essential to change this view and understand that education is not just about earning, but about building an enlightened and a responsible citizen, with an ability of self-growth through further learning. The condition of girls’ education is the worst, as most of them are not even enrolled in schools. The standard of our education is far from satisfactory. We have a public education system that encourages rote learning and textbook cramming, rather than aiming to develop critical thinking among the students. The teaching methodology at most public sector schools is completely outdated, and corporal punishment is a routine matter. The purpose of education is to equip the student with tools of analysis and develop their thinking abilities. Unfortunately our education fails to do this. When the students, who get a little training in the methodology of critical thinking and analysis at the secondary and higher secondary levels, reach the graduate and postgraduate levels, they fail to realize the ultimate objectives of analysing accumulated knowledge and structuring new knowledge. The curricula being taught constitute another area that needs urgent attention. Textbooks are mostly non-relevant to present day requirements. Science curricula must be regularly updated consistent with new developments taking place each day. The case of humanities is worse, particularly in history and Pakistan studies, the books give a blinkered view of reality and distorted facts, thanks to the politicisation of education. The basic purpose of teaching history is not only transferring information, but to develop an ability in the student to sift fact from opinion. Although some headway has been made in the form of detailed research reports pointing out parts that need revision, this issue must be dealt with as a top priority by the education ministry. The government also needs to expedite on madrassah reforms. Madrassahs not only provide education, but also board and lodging to their students thus giving poor parents an added incentive to send their children there. They in turn indoctrinate these innocent children. The drive to bring madrassah into the mainstream must be pursued consistently. Our education system needs thorough overhauling and the earlier it is done the better. In so doing , the government must not lose sight of the basic philosophy of education — to create independent thinking human being and responsible citizens. The Post

Education for all: Aziz urges joint efforts
KARACHI, Dec 1: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Thursday emphasized the importance of ‘partnership’ between the government and the private sector in the education sector to meet the future challenges by ensuring ‘education for all’.Inaugurating an international conference on ‘Towards 2035: The School of Tomorrow’, he said that developing human capital with tools to survive in a global village was imperative.

The prime minister referred to increased allocation for education and stressed the need for improving the curriculum, enhancing capacity and reforming the educational funding system.Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ebad Khan, Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim and Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri were present at the conference held under the auspices of the Beaconhouse School System.Mr Aziz said that his government’s education policy aimed at ensuring ‘easy access’ to quality education, expanding literacy programmes, development and expansion of vocational education as well as skill development.

He said it was not possible in a globalized world order to use the skill in isolation and no country could grow behind the barriers of tariff and other restrictions.Referring to regional inequities, he said the government was focusing on improving the curricula and enhancing the relevance of tertiary education in line with the market needs.He acknowledged that the challenge was enormous and owing to that his government had ‘almost doubled’ the expenditure on education in the past five years, from Rs56 billion in 2001 to Rs116 billion in 2004-05. He said the expenditure had increased from 2.7 per cent to 4 per cent of the GDP. He hinted at further increases and stressed the need for moving forward to ‘knowledge-based economy’.

“We recognize that human capital is of fundamental significance for moving forward and to compete in this global village,” said the premier, adding that investment in education was an investment for the future.“Therefore, the challenge for us is to link this investment to reform - not just more funds but fundamentally better education system, accelerating improvements in curricula, standards and opportunities and giving all our young boys and girls the chance to succeed. This is a key for the schools of tomorrow.”

He said the government was trying hard to re-orient the education system to help the next generation meet the future demands.He expressed the hope that the ‘schools of tomorrow’ would have web portal where both students and teachers would share information and have access to resources, knowing how to use new technologies to improve social integration and national cohesion besides building bridges with the knowledge-based community.

Mr Aziz said: “What we must see now is a system of independent and self-governing schools, underpinned by fair admissions, fair funding and fair inspections, where parents are equipped and enabled to drive improvement.”

He stressed that the students must be provided with a holistic education focused on both academic and non-academic domains.

“We have to give our students a range of experiences to develop robustness that enables them to retool and rebound from setbacks and the confidence to build and cross bridges they will inevitably encounter in their lives.”He said all we need is to lead young people to new learning for tomorrow based on three pillars: “Shared vision – imagine together, skill development - learn together, and shared leadership - lead together.”

He pointed out that it was not only the education sector that lacked experts. He said that bankers were complaining of shortage of skilled hands in their sector and added that the country was also facing a shortage of skilled personnel in the telecom sector where over 3,000 expatriates were filling in the void. Dawn