Training deficits

The training of teachers in Pakistan has never been a priority for any government. Teachers are recruited on an adhoc basis, often lack even the most basic qualifications and have little or no training in teaching techniques and methodologies. In the private sector, there may be some qualitative difference in terms of teaching skills and competencies from government schools, but deficits are evident even there. Teaching in English medium has long been suspect in terms of quality and a new report entitled “Can English Medium Education work in Pakistan” and conducted in Punjab is damning in its evidence. More than half the 2,000 teachers at government primary and middle schools and an even higher proportion in the private sector, lack the ability to understand and use simple phrases or have any English fluency.

The government of Punjab announced in 2009 that English would be the medium of instruction in all government schools, yet today, 56 per cent of teachers have “no measurable standard of functional language ability”. Small wonder, then, that those who send their children to government schools in Punjab — and most do — are rarely impressed with the education their children receive. It is all very well making a policy statement that English is henceforward to be the medium of instruction, but unless that is backed up by relevant training for teachers, then the blame cannot be laid at the teacher’s door. There is a remedy and the mass training of teachers in Punjab with the government working with the British Council is now under way, and 28,000 teachers were trained in 2012 and another 30,000 in the last summer. Training 330,000 teachers for 15 million children is a five-year task and that is just in a single province. Similar training deficits, and not just in English medium, will be found in every province. For education to be effective, it has to be invested in, and good teachers are not plucked from trees. Better late than never as the proverb says.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 16^th, 2013.

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