Want to change Pakistan’s academic landscape? Bring in principals as academic leaders

Seniority, as a criterion for appointment, has failed and turned 750 colleges in Punjab alone into academic wastelands

A saying goes, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” It sounds true as far as the current state of the higher education in Pakistan, particularly, Punjab is concerned.

Despite increasing efforts, the overall performance of public sector colleges remains unsatisfactory and much below the desired levels. On papers, a plethora of organisational objectives and compliance reports may paint a rosy picture; but the ground realities do not conform to the official depiction. The very dichotomy of reality and self-identity is at the heart of the problem. Two major pillars of any department in a college, the administration and the teaching community, have conflicting concepts about their respective identities and realities.



The administration sees itself as a ‘competent authority’ and believes that it can, exclusively and arbitrarily, dispose of everything. It becomes the source of everything: vision, academic calendar, lesson plan, class tests, exams and sports schedules. The administration tries to micromanage colleges through executive orders from the centre, notwithstanding the local conditions. On the other hand, the teaching community does not see itself even as a proposer because there is no mechanism to get their feedback or input. Clearly, the administration-teaching community pair is not working together at all.

Consequently, at least 750 colleges in Punjab’s public sector have turned into academic wastelands. Here, all kinds of campus activities campus life are already dying. The student-teacher relationship has transformed while developing an understanding of a subject is no more the core of teaching. With few exceptions, these institutions have become unable to inculcate the basic skills to their students. The administration continues to behave like a proverbial man with a hammer who thinks everything is a nail and tries to fix it accordingly. But, it cannot go like this. Now a question arises, what can work then?

A simple and workable strategy can undoubtedly change the whole academic setup in these institutions within one year. No radical change is being suggested here but rather a practical one within the existing system. Generally, a college’s performance hugely depends upon the standard of its leadership (principal). If a principal is visionary, the institution will boom but if he or she is not, the same institution will meet its doom. This explains why some of our institutions are working relatively better, under the same conditions. Blessed are the institutions which, by fate, have great leaders. But why others are so unlucky?



In a bid to be productive, academic institutions need leaders who can influence to perform beyond expectations. It appears that the government, solely, relies on administrative functions sans leadership. In an official set, a principal’s role is just to enforce the flood of orders and instructions coming down every day. So, anyone appointed on the basis of the ‘seniority’ could do even without any ascertainment of skills and training. In the real world, it does not happen but.

Seniority, as a criterion for the appointment of a principal, has failed to produce true leaders so far in Pakistan. Not only, these principals are unable to inspire their teachers and students but they also fail to control their own administrations. Being in the business, once, a principal asked me to provide him with a list of personality traits which he could insert in his annual evaluation reports. With such levels of competence, no one should be surprised if they let the institution go to the dogs. However, they learn how to survive and fool others. Their formula is: please the high ups with fake compliance reports.

Nonetheless, the present mechanism of selecting a principal is unable to pick capable academic leaders. Here is a precise proposal. A ‘separate cadre for principals’ should be created along the following lines with the purpose of producing leaders for academic institutions.

Eligibility: Teachers working in BPS-18 onward should apply for the position of a principal.

Selection procedure: All applicants should go through a written exam designed to test their basic communication skills, a psychological test, and an interview to assess their emotional stability, aptitude, and leadership skills.

Rigorous training: The selected persons must undergo a training programme – designed by experts on academic leadership – for at least six to nine months.

Pay and perks: The appointed persons should be given reasonable pay and perks, such as on-campus residence and conveyance.

Devolving powers: Principals should be given enough room to make necessary adjustments according to the local conditions.

New performance evaluation criterion: One component of an evaluation report must include assessment of the teaching faculty he leads. Presently, they are judged on the gauge of ‘good subordination’. Let us add systemic incentives to make them top leaders at academic levels.



There may not be a foolproof procedure to ensure 100 per cent desired results, but even if we are able to get close to 90 per cent fruitful results by making the best use of the aforementioned concept of selecting college principals in Punjab, it will be a huge leap forward. A sincere academic leader should know the spirit of learning and the importance of collegial governance, currently missing in a majority of our colleges for two reasons.

Firstly, the bureaucratic top layer of administration needs to be proficient in thinking and acting in terms of the hierarchy. They find it difficult to overcome their orientation and learn that education is a different ball game and so, they keep on operating in a command and compliance model. The chain of command virtually breaks at the level of the principal, he has to receive all the administrative fuss but he cannot pass it down to his colleagues. If he does, he will kill the essence of the cooperation and if he does not, he will require a bigger stature. Secondly, since an incompetent lot has already been fixed through a flawed process, they cannot understand that buck stops at their desk. Instead, they try to be a typical bureaucrat and thus, fail to deliver.

I had been a principal myself and I know that if you treat your faculty members as ‘subordinates’ you lose their pro-active cooperation. Besides resolving governance problems, a true academic leader would know the importance of cultivating a culture of co-curricular activities at campuses through creating activities with the vigorous participation of students and teachers. In every institution, some of the faculty members are not only professionally brilliant and hardworking; they also want to improve the standards of their institutions. However, uninspiring leadership does not let them do anything out of the box. True academic leaders can never support this

Painstaking selection of principals as academic leaders can astonishingly alter the overall academic landscape in the country. Although this will not resolve other core issues related to curriculum, textbooks, teachers’ training and examination system, competent leaders can still convert intellectual wastelands into proper learning institutes.

 

Shahid Anwar is a social and political analyst based in Islamabad.