The writer holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and works as the Chairman of the Punjab Information Technology Board. He tweets @umarsaif
“If Pakistan wants to keep up with its current level of school education, it needs to build a new school of 400 students every hour,” said a speaker at a recent World Economic Forum meeting. Improving the standard of the public school system in Pakistan is a daunting task. In Punjab, there are over 60,000 schools, 325,000 teachers and 10 million students enrolled in public sector schools. There are an additional seven million out-of-school children in Punjab.
We, at the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB), started rolling out a series of IT-based initiatives to help improve school education in Punjab. The results have convinced us that these initiatives are worth replicating. As a first step, we have started digitising school textbooks, making them freely available online. Importantly, in digitising the textbooks, we have focused on converting them into interactive learning resources, where each section of a textbook is embedded with video lectures, illustrations, simulations, games and exercises. Our interactive textbooks enable students to learn on their own and minimise dependence on the availability of a subject expert or evening tuitions.
The platform is designed to be an open platform, such that people can add new content on the e-Learn website and help us continuously improve the quality of e-books. Over 5,000 video lectures, animations, simulations and interactive assessments have been added to these textbooks. They are also being made available locally in the computer labs of public sector schools in Punjab. We plan to freely distribute CDs of this content.
We have also been working on strengthening the monitoring of public sector schools in Punjab using technology. The Punjab government employs thousands of monitoring officers, who randomly visit primary schools to report on the quality of facilities, enrollment, teacher and student attendance, staff presence etc. This data serves as the basis for a quarterly assessment by the chief minister.
About six months ago, we equipped 1,600 monitoring officers with Android tablets and trained them to file their reports digitally. Each report carries the GPS location of the school from where it was submitted and includes pictorial evidence of school facilities and staff presence. This has eliminated fake reports and has made the analysis instantaneous. Our system automatically analyses the incoming data in real-time and fires off SMS alerts to relevant officials if a performance indicator falls below a threshold e.g. teacher attendance, school enrollment, staff presence.
Furthermore, this has enabled us to take a stab at collecting data about two critical indicators: quality of teachers and student learning outcomes. Conducting a standardised province-wide test for over three million students is logistically challenging. Currently, standardised tests are conducted every few years. We need a testing system that continuously feeds the results back to the government for timely analysis and corrective measures. To achieve this, the tablets carried by these field monitors also have an additional application that enables them to pull up a question from a large bank of questions and test the teacher and students on the spot. The aim is to provide continuous feedback to the education department about the quality of teaching and student attainment.
We are also building an SMS/USSD-based system to test students on a large-scale using mobile phones. It is designed as an interactive messaging platform to send short multiple choice questions to students and analyse their answers in real-time. It can instantaneously test and compare the learning outcomes of thousands of students across Punjab. Since we use cellphone numbers of parents to conduct the tests, the initial response has indicated that parents have welcomed this initiative. We are currently developing a large database of SMS/USSD questions for grades four to eight. Our initial experiments with around 300,000 students in Punjab have been encouraging.
Finally, we are developing an automatic test-generation software for the Punjab Examination Commission, similar to the systems used for SAT, GRE, TOEFL etc. These systems are designed to automatically generate many different permutations of question papers for an exam. Hence no single exam can be ‘leaked’. This also naturally minimises the chances of cheating within an examination centre. Automatic marking of these computer-generated exam sheets eliminates the problem of variable grading quality and errors in tabulation.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 6th, 2015.
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COMMENTS (17)
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Its great to see the government building open platforms where civil society, NGOs and educationists can contribute. I just proposed a video lecture to be added from to a book chapter and it's been promptly linked to with appropriate attribution. Such open platforms are the way to go. Also great work in testing and automatic test generation -- need of the hour to rectify the exam system in Pakistan. I did find some of the cynical, politically coloured, comments distasteful though.
I do not want to come across as a cynic. But I am skeptical of these claims. Unless and until we can validate a measurable benefit, or positive outcome as a result of these actions, they would be no more than an exercise in futility. It is a bit problematic, if the Chairman appears to be taking credit for video lectures without recognizing the NGO that may have developed most of them. There is no harm in public-private partnership, if done for the good of the citizenry.
Having said that the most serious impact PITB can make is in the area of making the governance more effective and transparent.
For example, PITB should implement technology to significantly marginalize the need for patwaris. We should establish a nation land survey standard. And the landownership records should be available online, along with all the GIS survey information. This alone would benefit the public immensely.
We should be able to track every rupee spent by the provincial government on any contract, procurement, acquisition.
We should make it extremely easy for every citizen to receive, track and measure the performance of the provincial government for all services provided by the government.
Technology can make the process for requesting and tracking ALL services provided by the provincial government should become completely transparent to the general public. Technology can also make us safer and reduce the cost of services that that government provides us. PITB Chairman is a Cambridge graduate and I am sure can work with the CM secretariat to change local laws, such that inclusion of technology in all aspects of provincial services becomes pervasive.
There is no replacement of class based learning, please note nations which are far superior in information technology than us do not use such gadgets to teach their students especially in schools. These could be useful teaching aids but not the solution. Government must take steps to improve the public sector schools, such steps will further deteriorate the already damaged system.
excellent work... Thumbs up for dr. Saif ... assessment techniques / practices for gauging student learning outcome is the area that needs more attention and hope with collaborative efforts of educationist and technology experts we will be able to see more realistic and practically feasible systems for measuring student learning outcomes.
Please don't forget English language. .
I meant PITB, the error is regretted.
Good work by PITB, now I only hope that the results of the survey are transparently published and that the Punjab govt takes some timely action on it.
Brilliant work. Sitting here at Stanford, I never realized that such initiatives will be taken one day in Pakistan -- especially the ELearn platform, which looks like the equivalent of Khan Academy for Pakistan students. Great work by PITB; they are often quoted as an example and a ray of hope for us Pakistanis living abroad.
The PBIT is making a significant contribution to Punjab's school education through its e-learning initiative! However, it can be made far more effective if it is complemented with a robust teacher training program, critical for strengthening the base of the educational value chain.
Good initiative!!! I would like to see the results of this effort made public. The tax payers should know the current state of the education system managed by the government.
Very much appreciable job done by Dr. Saif and his team. Please keep it up and spread to other provinces too.
Good article!
The 5000 video lectures mentioned by Dr Umar, majority of them are developed by a non-profit in Islamabad Sabaq Foundation (www.sabaq.pk) and given to PITB free of charge. These video lectures cover every topic in classes 9-12 for Math, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology.
The purpose of these video lectures is to help Pakistani student learn the real concepts and compete internationally.
I encourage everybody to visit www.sabaq.pk.
Excellent initiative of Punjab Govt; no doubt it is proven all over the world that Distance Learning via using IT Technology is best alternate of formal education.
Good way to benefiting our children’s wellbeing, lifestyle and development.
the e-learning initiative of the Punjab government is incredibly impressive. Wonderful, brilliant work. Kudos to Dr saif and his team. We need more of this in pakisyan.