K-P education reforms

The state of education in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) is in a tussle with itself. In the 2015-16 academic school year, provincial education officials discovered that there was an influx of approximately 34,000 former-private school students at their government institutions. The reason is due to the tenuous K-P Registration and Functioning of Private Education Institutions Ordinance, 2001, which has allowed the cost of private education to rise without a ceiling cap and without defined criteria on teacher qualification. Unable to afford private education and dissatisfied with their quality, parents have opted for public education for their children. The shift towards public education might be a progressive development as the state of government education is evolving, but private institutions need some regulation, particularly in terms of quality standards and considering it is a nascent industry prone to exploitation.

At this point, however, it would be naive to say that the state of government education is improving significantly in K-P. So far, its education department has focused on school infrastructure and teacher training but there are still many reforms to be made. Competition from the private sector should be welcomed but both sectors must work towards a shared primary goal: to churn out astute students well-suited for higher education. Instead, the former is mired in corruption by teachers who draw salaries without fulfilling their duties and the latter in raising profits without justifying costs and delivering quality. Provinces across the country continue to operate ghost schools, though some have been shut down, and have an exploitive private education system. It is incumbent on provincial education departments and respective private school associations to devise better laws for the functioning of private schools to facilitate education, not make it a burden and dissuade parents and students from obtaining it.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 22^nd, 2016.

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