The quality mirage: Teaching English

Here is a study finding that may not come as a startling revelation: most teachers in Punjab lack even minimum proficiency in English. But I am fairly certain that a related finding will come as a surprise to many: a higher percentage of private school teachers were found to be deficient in English compared with public school teachers when assessed by the British Council. The study tested 2,008 primary and middle school teachers in 18 districts of Punjab using the Aptis language testing system. While 56 per cent of government school teachers registered scores in the lowest possible band in the Aptis test, meaning that “they lack even basic knowledge of English”, in private schools, the number was higher at 62 per cent. For a long time now, Low Fee Private Schools (LFPS) have branded themselves as English medium schools in response to the widespread popular belief that holds quality education to be synonymous with English as a medium of instruction. Private schooling has come to be equated with ‘quality’ in the popular imagination.

The government, too, seems to have taken the lesson of ‘English as quality’ to heart and moved to similarly brand public sector schools as English medium. In 2009, it introduced, on a gradual basis, English as a medium of instruction for Science and Mathematics in public sector schools from Grade 1 to 12. There is anecdotal evidence that this has helped public sector schools slow their rate of student exit. There is another commonality shared by public and private schools that casts a shadow over the various efforts to improve quality of education, such as improved teacher attendance, more intensive monitoring, etc.: the great majority of public and private schools are simply not equipped to adopt English as a medium for the teaching of various subjects, given that their teachers lack competence in English.

Advocates of greater private sector salience in education have argued that the level of attainment of students in even LFPS is well above that of their counterparts in government schools. The Learning and Educational Achievement in Punjab Schools (LEAPS, 2007) study, for instance, makes that argument on the basis of research carried out in three districts of Punjab. It has been difficult to persuade stakeholders that this does not detract from the fact that the great majority of children in Pakistan are not really learning much at school regardless of sector, given that this differential is at the very low end of the quality scale. After about two decades of dynamic private school growth, the study gives us one clear indication as to where the sector stands, at least in the realm of English.

To come back to language and learning, we need to remind ourselves that the combination of teachers and students who are not competent in English has serious implications not just for the teaching and learning of English but also for other subjects such as Mathematics and Science. As the British Council Report itself points out, “English medium instruction from teachers with low English ability is likely to disadvantage children twice — first by preventing them from improving functional language ability and second by impeding their learning content”. Not that there was a great deal of learning taking place when English was not the formal medium of instruction. But an overlay of English, badly taught and learnt, can only make a bad situation worse. The real need remains: teachers with better knowledge of the subjects they teach and improved instructional practice.

Another study, to be released shortly, investigating language use in Punjab primary-level classrooms, also concludes that the adoption of English as the medium of instruction at the primary level is problematic. Notwithstanding the Council’s intent to undertake large-scale training of teachers, should there not be an interim strategy with respect to the adopted medium of instruction, at least at the early grade level, until we have qualified and trained teachers in adequate numbers? In any case, the issue is which language should be adopted to support learning at what level of schooling. The recently launched Punjab Education Sector Plan proposes a study on school language aimed at developing a policy that “ensures a balance between proficiency in English and Urdu languages and cognitive development”. Certainly, it is high time we had such a policy.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 15^th, 2013.

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