Education for all: ‘I won’t stop till I reach the top’

Teach For Pakistan fellows discuss how teachers can transform the lives of students.

LAHORE:

“You have to keep trying even if you fail once or twice...when you set a goal, only stop once you achieve it,” students featuring in a documentary by the Teach for Pakistan-Lahore say.

The documentary was screened at the formal launch of the programme, funded by the Small Grants Fund Programme under the USAID, on Friday.

Teach for Pakistan is part of the global network Teach for All which has a presence in 32 countries.

The funds were provided under the USAID’s Small Grants and Ambassador’s Fund Programme, which supports small-scale, grassroots organisations and projects, in October last year.

Funding under this grant will continue till September this year TFP Lahore city manager Sanam Kubra Siddiqui said. The grant supports recruitment for the TFP on a national level as well as the TFP’s Lahore chapter.

According to statistics shared by the TFP, only 2 per cent of school-going children in Pakistan possess age-appropriate knowledge.

Mariam Zahid, a member of the recruitment and selection team at TFP Lahore, said disparity in the education system hindered the academic progress of children. “Low social and economic backgrounds of most of these children determine their academic future, which is unfair,” she said. To counter this, she suggests systemic interventions at the policy level and in schools and classrooms. “70 per cent of the teachers spend less than half of their time in class teaching,” she said. Zahid said the selection process for the two-year fellowship at low-resource schools involved an intense cycle of reviews, selection, interviews, assessment and then recruitment. The aim, she said, was to recruit young bright people to make a difference through a positive contribution to these schools.

The TFP claims that almost 85 per cent of their fellows remain in the development sector after their fellowship ends.

“When you teach, you take on the roles of the student as well as the teacher. First you learn and work out the best way to transfer that knowledge. This is what inspires me about teaching,” Hassan Yar, a TFP fellow who teaches mathematics to grades 6 to 9, said.

Originally from Balochistan, Yar sees growing disparity between the two provinces – the one he has lived in and the one he teaches in. “Punjab is way ahead of Balochistan in terms of the education system and policies,” he said.

Sara Inam, a graduate of the Lahore University of Management Sciences and a TFP fellow who teaches English to grades 6 to 8, says education brings empowerment and allows individuals to not just dream but also to achieve. “Above all there is the need to stay proactive. We need to move away from self pity and despair to hope and success.”

TFP Chief Executive Officer Noor Masood says education is a complicated issue with no single solution. “Our education system and teachers are so stretched that they fail to give individual attention to students,” she said. “This amplifies the problem in an already challenged educational system.” Striking a personal note, Masood recalls that she was a shy and diffident child until grade 6, when her life changed. “One of my teachers, singlehandedly changed the lives of several girls in my class, and mine, through individual attention and encouragement…because that is what children want and need.” Inspired by the attitudes of teachers who helped transform her, Masood says she now aspires to achieve the same with all her students.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 22^nd, 2014.