Pakistan is one of the developing countries in the world, facing various kind of economic, political, social and educational challenges to facilitate its 5th worlds’ most populous country. Currently, the emergence of COVID-19 has further worsened the situation as the paradigm has been tilted towards the health, while other sectors have been paid with little importance to combat with the world-wide pandemic.
Education is the backbone of any country’s development. Ironically, since its existence in the map of the world, Pakistan has been continuously facing difficulties in providing the education to all its masses. Though, in past, Pakistan has been a continued signatory of UN goals, i.e. Dakar Conference, The United Nations Millennium Development Goals 2000-2015, and current sustainable development goals 2015-30. Besides certain important human development activities, all these goals endorse higher priority to education including the objective of education to all and improving the quality of education.
There are so many causes directly hampering the achievement of set goals, particularly the education. According to Save the Children and UNICEF (2005) report, Pakistan faced with many problems simultaneously such as poverty, insecurity, sectarianism and terrorism. In addition, certain unexpected challenges also occur along with the continued challenges, so the existing governments had to shift their focus towards the sudden encountered challenges. For those reasons, Pakistan has given the secondary importance to educational sector, and the past practices in budget allocation for education sector show that every year the budget allocation remained less than 3% of overall GDP growth. According to International Crisis group, Pakistan is amongst the 12 countries in the world that spent less than 2%t of their GDP on education sector. Currently, after lapse of more than 70 years, and adoption of more than 25 educational polices, still the education system has badly failed to take the nation out of the increasing economic, political and social quagmire (Rehman & Khan, 2011).
Earlier studies, for instance, Louis (1987) explored various challenges pertaining to educational system of Pakistan. He pointed out that in Pakistan, the educational sectors problems are associated with the lack of adequate budget, lack of policy implementation, defective examination system, poor physical facilities, lack of teacher quality, lack of implementation of education policies, directionless education, low enrolment, high scale dropouts, political interference, outdated curriculum, corruption, poor management and supervision, lack of research, and lack of uniformity. Zaki (1989) studies depicted out that these all challenges are the result of divisive Pakistani education system, offering multi-layer educational systems.
While analyzing the past 10-20 years challenges highlighted by many researchers, the same challenges seem continued till current era with a slow-paced progression. Though, various governments claimed to pay special concentration of this important aspect by being involved with international fora, but the prevailing situation is quite alarming. This can be seen through the current literacy rate of Pakistan, which is hardly around 63%. The underachieved performance in the educational contexts of Pakistan seemed engulfed with many challenges, impeding the achievement of educational goals in one way the other.
One of the leading challenges is the focus of education in Pakistan context. It seems that Pakistani education system due being directionless and weak, has not been able to develop and guide its people on sound political and social grounds. There is lack of cohesion in the system and it is more prone towards general education which does not bring any skilled manpower to the market.
In educational milieu, the Curriculum is considered as most important tool to achieve the goals of education. Though, the current National Education Policy (2017) has been an improved document to guide teaching and learning, but in the past various curriculum documents does not meet the demands of the current times. Most of these documents depict out an old and traditional curriculum which compels the learners to memorize certain facts and figures (the lowest indicator of Bloom’s taxonomy of learning domains), without taking into consideration the reality that education is the holistic development of an individual. The focus relies around psychological aspects of curriculum aspects, while the other two philosophical and sociological aspects are missed out. Generally, various curriculum documents do not address the modern standards of education and research. Hence promoting the interest of the learner for practical work, research, scientific knowledge and reflective observation- the most important ingredients of holistic development are missing, emphasizing only the theoretical aspects and rote memorization.
Professional development of teachers is a key to achieve the objectives of educational standards. As teaching is one of the most challenging jobs, and those teachers teach better who are equipped with sound instructional skills. At the moment, there is lack of training opportunities for teachers in Pakistan. Though, there are various training institutions, but due to lack of financial support, a major proportion of teachers could not avail opportunities to align their teaching and learning practices with modern needs.
Another challenge in educational sector is the acceptance and respect of teachers (nation-builders) in the society. Currently, society has failed in raising the esteem of teachers they deserve. Hence, such attitude directly affects the teachers’ morale and teaching practices of teachers—- they become emotionally detached towards teaching and learning processes. In this regard, Rehman and Khan (2011) while studying, “The flaws in Pakistan’s Education System” found that teachers do not use new methods and strategies of teaching and learning. It’s a bigger challenge that majority of the teachers do not know about lesson planning which renders them incapable of dealing with various problems in the process of teaching and learning. Mostly, the teachers focus on traditional ways of lecture method, and encourage cramming of the materials by students.
Disciplinary issues prevail in schools, mostly the urban schools where the media don’t have access to capture the prevailing situation. In repeated intervals, we see at electronic media that corporal punishment continues in various contexts, though it’s banned under the law. This, along with certain leadership and management issues remain instrumental in increasing the dropout ratio of children in schools. According to Hayes (1989), the reasons of drop out of children are partly the punishment in schools, poor motivating or unattractive school environment and partly due to weak parenting on the part of parents. Ironically, on average, 68 % children complete their primary education and only 30 % of children enrolled in primary education reach to the matric level.
There is a dire need to revisit and revitalize the existing examination system. Examination is the evaluation of student’s learning. It should be based on qualitative and quantitative techniques to comprehensively evaluate the performance of students. The standards must ensure validity and reliability of the procedures used in the assessment process. The basic aim of assessment is to evaluate the performance of students. The examination system of Pakistan is not only outdated but it also does not have the needful quality to evaluate the performance of learners comprehensively. The examination system of Pakistan tests only the memory of students. It compromises with all other needful competencies so students’ evaluations in real meanings is missing.
Education resources such as books, libraries and physical facilities are important for smooth running of educational processes and involve students in co-curricular activities to deepen their learning. There are despairingly limited facilities of books, libraries and reading materials in all educational institutions of the country. Besides, there are overcrowded classrooms, inadequate teachers and ill-equipped laboratories. This entire grim situation has resulted in a despair and low standard education in Pakistan, which is alarming for our future chores.
In short, education sector in Pakistan needs special concentration with tailored initiatives to regain its stake. The government, along with the other educational institutions must develop certain strategies which could really address the needs of the learners. Moreover, the schools must be equipped with needful resources to implement the amended curriculum in its real essence. Such measures not only will improve our education quality, they can raise the status of our country in international arena.
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Sultan Alam
Senior Instructor
The Aga Khan University- Professional Development Center North
University Road, Konodass Gilgit
