Pakistan's Education: A damning survey

An independent survey of countrywide primary education in our rural areas is presently making tidal waves among the thinking class for the distressingly dismal condition of it that it paints. And if our ruling elites are any real and committedly sold to the nation's good, the survey should make them to sit up and start worrying about this perturbing phenomenon. The survey found that more than half of the Class V students couldn't read Class II English sentences, nor could do two-digit division or subtraction. And barely half of them could read Class II-level story text in Urdu/Sindhi/Pashto. From this could well be imagined what would be the standard of learning of students of classes below Class V. Although Punjab fared comparatively better than other provinces, primarily due to foreign donors' interventions, but its showing too was not any glorious. It was just passable. In a way, the survey is no bombshell, though. The lamentable condition of schooling, particularly of state-run not just in the countryside but also in urban centres, is no secret to anybody. The officialdom knows of it as much as do the citizens. The ailments afflicting destructively the schooling, in the public sector in particular, are commonplace experiences and observations. Where comes the problem is the rulers' will to take on those maladies and cure them. The stark deficit on those score is dauntingly gigantic, indeed. None of the rulers has ever sat down and thought hard how to clean up the mess that has become of the public schooling in the country, even as it caters to the largest segment of the populace, mostly drawn from the poverty-plagued poor classes that can by no stretch of imagination afford the prohibitively expensive schooling in the private sector. More often than not, the rulers go for some showy works that in substance are of dubious value to the greater cause of education, though of immense service to their personal fames and reputes. No wonder, the institution of teacher, unquestioningly forming the system's lynchpin, has come to be treated so shabbily. In the first place, the institution has become for the political class a dumping place of favourites who cannot be absorbed somewhere else in reward of their loyalties and services. And the beneficiaries deem themselves answerable to none else but their benefactors alone. None else can question them, nor do they think they are accountable for their pupils' standard of education anyway. Then, for very many, the institution has become a mere transit point to move on to greener pastures once the opportunity occurs. Teaching as a profession verifiably comes natural to only a select few. In the given conditions, what else could one expect if not that the Class V students in majority would be unable to come up to the Class II pupils' standard in reading and mathematical problems? The reasons for the persistent degradation of the teacher institution are not unknown, either. The rulers of every brand know of them as much as do the hoi polloi. The trouble, again, is the will to remove those baneful handicaps. Nonetheless, that should be no problem if only the rulers sincerely get committed to the cause of education and brook with no impulsions whatsoever that obstruct or impede the sublime mission of educating the nation's children, particularly of its disadvantaged segments. The first imperative step for carrying out this mission is to throw out all the political appointees who have shown no interest in teaching. The institution would do without those sinecures. Secondly, the new recruits must be taken in strictly on the basis of merit and aptitude for teaching. The institution must cease to be a stepping-stone for greener pastures. If indeed right teachers are available, they can make the schooling fairly good even in the given dismal conditions of infrastructure. But such teachers will not come by if the right incentives are not put in place to attract the really fit for teaching in primary schools. That necessarily calls for drastic changes in the matters of pay, allowances and promotions of teachers. It merely is sheer stupidity to expect that for small-scale salaries fully qualified teachers will come forward to teach in rural areas and that too in primary schools. There has to be an attractive package to allure such teachers. They have not to be treated like other government servants. An extraordinary offer has to be put in place, as they do in advanced polities where primary school teachers are in fact paid higher salaries and perks than their mates teaching senior classes. Surely, a sagacious political leadership here in our own country would happily take the same plunge, knowing fully that primary education, particularly in our sprawling countryside swarming with surging populace, including multitudes of children, forms the fundamental foundation of our educational pyramid. Are then there any takers among our incumbents to take this plunge? That indeed will test their commitment education in the real sense, not those lofty vows with which they all routinely regale our ears incessantly. The greater good of the nation lies in this, they must know. The nation's interest is really served when its Class V students can compete toughly with their Class VI pals.