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Sub-theme: Education

Panel: Educational policies in the South Asia

• Enhancing Quality of Higher Education in Pakistan: A Critical Evaluation of HEC Policies
• New Discourse on Educational Policies in South Asia (A Study on Primary Education Focusing Female Literacy)
• Pakistan’s Education Policies Fail: Rhetoric or Reality
• Teacher Education for Sustainable Change: Practices and Possibilities

Enhancing Quality of Higher Education in Pakistan: A Critical Evaluation of HEC Policies
Sarfraz Khan*

The Higher Education Commission (HEC) was created replacing the University Grants Commission (UGC), in Pakistan some six years ago to promote and supervise higher education. The HEC has taken numerous initiatives in the name of reforming the system of education and especially enhancing quality of higher education. Its policies have generated controversy and unrest amongst the academia all over Pakistan. Various academicians have challenged a number of policies formulated and implemented by the HEC.

The paper aims at describing recent initiatives taken by the HEC to enhance quality of higher education and its effect on the state of PhD research. Rules and regulations from admission to enlargement of mandatory course work, role of supervision, actual research, process of evaluation as well as financial assistance to researchers and supervisors has been taken into account. The paper also attempts to analyze impact of these polices on production of quality research. Concrete examples and case studies will be cited and alternative polices and measures to reform will be suggested.

*Prof. Dr. Sarfraz Khan earned his Ph.D. from the SOAS, University of London, UK in 1998. He is presently working as Professor, Area Study Centre (Russia, China &Central Asia), University of Peshawar, Pakistan, since February 2002.

New Discourse on Educational Policies in South Asia (A Study on Primary Education Focusing Female Literacy)
D. Parimala*

Majority of the poor in the world, which constitutes almost 70 per cent of the population, are women (Human Development Report, 1995) and most of them illiterate. Literacy is a basic need for survival in the modern world. For being able to understand what is going around them, to communicate with the outside world, to demand and use the services from service providers and to absorb technological knowledge, it is essential to sensitize women towards education. Women need literacy to protect themselves from simple cheating, for obtaining credit and banking services, for cost calculations, etc. Thus women need minimum of literacy for fulfilling their practical needs. Accordingly, primary education has been declared a child right by the UN charter on child rights. In South Asia, both reducing poverty and human development are priority areas and girl’s education has been accorded some priority in this context. However, gender inequality with regard to access to education in the region still persists. The ratio between male/female literacy is increasing which is also distributed unevenly among the nations of South Asia, Sri Lanka standing on one end of the scale with highest female literacy and enrolment levels and Nepal and Pakistan taking up the lower ends in adult literacy and enrolment levels respectively.

The aim of this paper is to examine the gender dimensions of policy, planning and management of education for all (EFA) program in the South Asian countries, especially focusing on primary education. No doubt that literacy is a basic need for any country that leads to development, the focus of this paper is on gender equity and women empowerment in South Asian countries which is not quite possible without the women being literate. Consequently, educational policy is being subjected to plethora of reforms, innovations and remedial measures in an attempt to make the educational institutions more viable and responsive to changing needs and demands of society. Given this type of changing environment in our educational system, many issues have emerged with specific problems related to female literacy that needs immediate attention and focus of our policy makers.

* Dr. D. Parimala is an Assistant Professor, Department of Education, University of Delhi, India.

Pakistan’s Education Policies Fail: Rhetoric or Reality
Muhammad Memon*

It is important to recognize that policies are goal-oriented and guided by philosophical, epistemological and ideological underpinnings. Pakistan inherited its education system from the British rule in 1947 and its first and foremost task was to formulate policy guidelines to restructure and reorient the education system meeting the needs of a new nation. Although there was no formal education policy till 1970, the recommendations of the first education conference (1947) and national commission on education (1959) provided a new vision of education based on Islamic ideology. Thus, policy guidelines helped to decolonize education system and shape a cohesive education policy later. To date, a number of educational policies have been launched. These include: recommendations of 1947 education conference, recommendations of 1959 national commission on education, new education policy 1970 and 1972, national education policy 1978, 1992 and 1998 with a four-year educational sector reform action plan 2001. A dominant discourse of these policies has been promoting democracy, social justice and citizenship and self-reliance within the perspective of Islamic ideology.

The downside of sate of affairs was that policy-making has not been institutionalized in Pakistan what Shahid (1985) calls ‘adhoc business’. Success or failure of any education system will depend on the strategic direction of education policies. Most education policies in the developing countries are the outcomes of a linear model of policy development focusing on identifying problems, developing solutions and strategies. This has crated a dichotomy between policy formulation and implementation. Such policies will never become smart and future-oriented to address the broader issues of education in the national, regional and international scenario.

Literature on policy studies suggests that over-simplification of policy-making process will hardly be able to capture the complexity of policy formulation and implementation what Bowe et al. (1992) call ‘messiness’. Ball (1994) reinforces the need for seeing policy as both process and product. This does not only include the statement of strategic direction, organizational and operational values but also help operationalize values in its context. Recognizing the messiness and complexity of policy-making the process should be a non-linear and dialectical by engaging stakeholders at all levels.

Study of education policies, particularly in developing countries has seldom been considered as priority of their respective governments until recently. Even, policy-making had been taken for granted in developed countries (Bell and Stevenson, 2006). Policy doctrines set strategic direction of education in any country. These doctrines are either guided by the manifesto of ruling political parties or wisdom of technocrats or bureaucrats. Pakistan’s educational policies are eventually influenced by the ideology of Pakistan and manifesto of the respective ruling political parties but one cannot rule out the influence of external pressure group. It has been said that the international donor agencies have a major role in setting direction of education in Pakistan since they fund mega education projects.

Taylor et al. (1997) suggest three dimensions of education policy framework-context, text, consequences. Bell and Stevenson (2006) further add that policy-making/studying must be done at four levels--socio-political environment, strategic direction, organizational principles and operational practices and procedures. Combining Taylor’s framework of policy analysis with Bell and Stevenson’s levels of policy analysis has been used as cohesive conceptual framework to analyze the national education policies of Pakistan.

The policy analysis indicates that all educational policies dealt with ‘micro-level’ rather than ‘macro-level’ issues; hence these policies became ‘inward looking’ rather than ‘outward looking’. The policies seemed to be product of a linear model by presenting a number of solutions to problems instead of making an attempt to understand the complexity of problems. Of course, socio-political context was kept in mind while formulating educational policies, however, most of education policies had been inconsistent in their direction, aims, targets and implementation strategies. It was also found that due to lack of research-based policy analysis most of policies postponed their targets, particularly universal primary education, access, equity and quality of education. Hence, a non-realistic approach was adopted to determine targets of policies. Prevailing adhoc approach to policy-making, lack of institutional capacity, accountability, understanding of international trends such as poverty reduction, globalization, privatization, devolution and deregulation, public-private partnerships, and participation of key stakeholders also became major stumbling blocks. Hence, it is legitimate to draw conclusion from the analysis that all educational policies in Pakistan have actually failed since they have not brought about any major changes and improvement in the education sector.

References:

BALL, S. Education Reform: A Critical and Post-structural Approach, Buckingham: Open University Press, 1994.

BELL, L. and STEVENSON, H. Education Policy: Process, Themes, and Impact, London: Routledge Taylor and Francis, 2006.

BOWE, R. and BALL, S. J with GOLD, A. Reforming Education and Changing Schools, London: Routledge, 1992.

SHAHID, P. The Implementation of National Education Policies, Islamabad: Academy of Educational Planning and Management, Islamabad, 1985.

TAYLOR, S., RIZVI, F. LINGARD, B. and HENRY, M. Education Policy and the Politics of Change, London: Routledge, 1997.

* Dr. Muhammad Memon is Director of the Institute of Educational Department, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan.

Teacher Education for Sustainable Change: Practices and Possibilities
Shahid Siddiqui*

Scholars consider education as a powerful means of change, emancipation, and development at individual and societal levels. In Pakistan, however, it falls short of achieving these objectives despite a large number of education policies and curriculum documents since 1947. One important factor, which has been downplayed, is the central role of teachers in the execution of any given curriculum in the classrooms. A major source of empowering teachers is teacher education. There is a growing literature on change at societal level through education in general and teacher education in particular. This paper takes the stance that a change, which is short-lived is easy to acquire, less difficult to demonstrate but has little to contribute to sustainable development. On the one hand, long lasting change is more challenging to bring about, harder to demonstrate in short time, but is crucial for sustainable teacher development. In teacher education programs in Pakistan a short term, visible, measurable change may be achieved but the impact of this change seldom travels to or/and stays at school. Consequently the professional development of teachers cannot be sustained. For the non-sustainability of the development one could explore a number of reasons. For instance, lack of re-conceptualization of educational notions, deficient re-entry preparation on teacher education program, insufficient support from colleagues, want of cooperation from head teachers, dearth of follow up programs to track the performance of teachers, and lack of follow-on programs to update the professional (both content and pedagogical knowledge) of the trainees. This paper focuses on sustainable development from the perspective of teacher education and suggests a mechanism to sustain the educational change initiated by a teacher education program.

* Dr. Shahid Siddiqui has taught in the Aga Khan University, Lahore University of Management Sciences, and GIK Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Pakistan. Presently, he is working as Professor & Director of Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences, Lahore School of Economics, Pakistan. His areas of interest include language issues, educational change, and critical pedagogy.