Education goals and outcomes

Education in Pakistan is not making slow or steady progress. Educationists aver that although school enrolment across the country’s rural areas has increased, students are not learning much. Figures reported in the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Pakistan show that although more children are attending classes, they may not be utilising that time productively. Considering that the subject pool for the data was large with 255,269 students studied at 5,540 rural schools, the information should be heavily perused not only by those in the education department, but by all stakeholders, including the teachers themselves at the schools surveyed and the philanthropists who operate private schools through their goodwill and community fundraising. It would be prudent to use the data as a means to reset administrative goals. Primarily, though, the education department needs to spearhead the endeavour as 63 per cent of children between three and five and 74 per cent of students between six and 16 attend public schools, according to ASER.

Albeit, each province runs a separate education department, there needs to be a push towards a better standardised curriculum, one that incorporates multimodal strategies and must be complete with resources to be used to consolidate student learning. As with any curriculum, the learning objectives and mission statement should be outlined first. Another most crucial aspect is funding. There is a lack of resources that would otherwise aid in imparting quality education in the way of teacher training and aligning pedagogy with 21^st-century practice. Better resources include appropriate learning material and teaching methodology.

The lack of attention paid to the education sector is becoming more apparent as our economy develops. It is time to raise the bar.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 28^th, 2017.

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