Daily Times

Pakistan, at the time of its inception, not only inherited the government of India act but also the system of education introduced by the British along with a parallel system of Madaris like Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband, Nadwatul Ulema, then the institutions under Aligarh movement where the system of education was a blend of both religious and modern studies.

The confusion prevailing in our system of government and political structure has trickled down to the system of education and if we review the history, the growth of the different streams continued with the inclusion of private schools and a rapid growth of Madaris. The absence of a unified system of education is the biggest hurdle in nation building and a visionary society through education policies and education reforms have been initiated by different political regimes to improve upon the quality of education. However, the complete implementation of each policy has always remained a question mark. Any policy aimed at better and improved education cannot be successful if the key character involved- the teachers- are not trained and sensitised to the core objectives of teaching and learning for nation building.

There are three parallel systems of Education in Pakistan; the public schools, madaris, and the private schools. Private schools are further bifurcated into subsystems. We have chains of Cambridge-affiliated schools and small home-based schools growing like mushrooms day by day as it is considered to be a secure business as well.

There are three parallel systems of Education in Pakistan; the public schools, madaris, and the private schools

The three systems are educating the students as per their specific scheme of studies and curriculum with the support of the teachers. Apparently, there doesn’t seem to be any connectivity in the systems followed by three streams as the public schools are mostly into traditional learning where the teacher is the total source of knowledge and transfers knowledge to the students, which is to be reproduced more or less in the same form even if the real meaning is not understood.

I still remember the days and it is a continued practice even now that we would sing the national anthem even though we never understood the Persian vocabulary till grade ten when the Urdu teacher made us understand the actual meaning of the Anthem.

The latest criteria of selection are a Bachelor’s Degree with Bachelor of Education (BEd) for elementary schools and a Master’s degree with Bed for secondary and higher education in public schools.

The private schools (Cambridge affiliated) claim to provide activity-based learning, and conceptual learning, with the same human resource that is a product of traditional teaching methodologies of public school system mostly. However, these systems do try to train the teachers on modern teaching methodologies.

The teachers in Madaris mainly follow the traditional system where the teacher again is the source of information and the learner is expected to reproduce the learnt content without any addition or deletion- the system of rote learning or memorization of the content is followed.

In the absence of a unified curriculum for the three systems, we can see three different classes being prepared. Each system is imparting education in isolation from the other with no apparent connectivity and commonalities, however, one common ground if we look broadly is that teachers are there in three systems. And the second commonality is the teaching of Islamiat and Urdu books of respective textbook boards in all three types of institutions. Some of the Madaris also teach Social Studies and Math until grade ten.

In the words of William Arthur Ward “Teaching is more than imparting knowledge, it is inspiring change. Learning is more than absorbing facts, it is acquiring understanding.”

A teacher can make or break a child — this should be the topmost consideration. Conducive teaching depends on multiple factors and the most important of these is the teacher who is imparting knowledge with inspiration.

Though under various reforms teachers are being trained in public schools on new teaching methodologies, yet we shouldn’t forget that the impressions inscribed in their minds by their mentors through traditional teaching and learning systems, are very strong.

Secondly, the B.Ed.is additional qualification that focuses on activities and audio-visual aids but in real scenario, very few teachers are seen practically using audio-visual aids in classroom environment and ultimately just being confined to the book.

Thirdly, since the training involves a handsome amount of stipend as a result, usually the blue-eyed ones of the school administration are part of training offered and their ultimate goal isn’t learning but the financial benefits.

Amongst the private schools, particularly Cambridge affiliated, each one has its own criteria of selection, followed by their own capacity building training programs; however, more focus is on English as a medium of instruction. Though provincial governments do train the public school teachers and so do the private schools, yet a teachers training exchange between the teachers, or collaboration among the teachers of three systems can lead to the opening of new vistas for all involved in teaching and learning.

A set of reforms to provide opportunities for training, interactions initially on the compulsory or common subjects like Urdu, Islamiat, and in some cases social studies and English can be beneficial as all three systems use the textbooks of the respective textbook boards for these subjects. Later on, need-based programs can be devised as each system has its strengths as well.

The teachers at Madaris are good at religious education, recitation and interpretations, the skills which usually the public and private school teachers lag behind in. Since Islamiat is a compulsory subject I think the ones teaching Islamiat can benefit from these Madrassa teachers and enhance their knowledge and skills.

We have a well-documented national curriculum for the state-run schools which is claimed to be activity-based, but unfortunately due to insufficient facilities, a large number of students in the classes and most importantly due to insufficient training and sensitization of teachers, the objectives of the certain lessons in the classrooms are hardly met and an activity-based lesson is imparted with a traditional teaching methodology.

Looking at the Madaris, the situation is further closed box type where certain books are to be memorized and interestingly after remembering the whole content, the learner is eligible to be a teacher.

Let teachers training of all three parallel streams be a priority of the next government as well as the topmost priority in the education policy as it will definitely connect the disconnected for positive outcomes.

There needs to be a general unified criterion for the selection/appointment of the teachers initially and then the specific one as per the need of the subject.

The selection criterion must be strictly followed by the private schools as well. Since Madaris deal with a different scheme of studies, they can be asked to design a selection standard of their own, which can be modified later on. I believe that you keep reforming curriculum, keep making the textbooks colourful, but until the human resource involved is not trained and well equipped with critical thinking themselves, all such reforms are in vain.

The writer has experience in the field of education and is currently working as a resource person in the development sector

Published in Daily Times, June 24^th 2018.