In Dire Straits

In the absence of proper regulations and enforcement, corruption and incompetence reign supreme

Karachi: Eminent educationists and reformers are calling for a revamping of the country’s education system so as to make quality education accessible to the middle- and lower-class students. Without this, the state will be failing in its duty to modernise the society by creating grounds for human development, they say.

One clear symptom of the falling education standards is the birth and transformation of the tuition or coaching centres into a roaring business across the country. Private coaching of students that started at the basic school level has over the decades expanded to college and university levels.

According to experts, education standards must comply with the basic philosophy behind it. For example, English writer William Butler Yeats described education as “not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire”. Likewise, Rober Frost wrote that “education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence.”

Below is what two experts interviewed by Bol News said.

Mohammad Alam Brohi
Author, columnist and former ambassador

The education system has been fully commercialized. There are three systems. The elite schools with their own buildings, play grounds and qualified teachers include chains that are owned either by the armed forces or the civil elite. The second tier includes private English medium schools that are comparatively less expensive and cater to the middle-class children. Then there are public sector schools to cater to the general masses.

Privately-owned institutions have a reward and punishment system and observe merit in appointments and promotions. But public sector education has gone completely haywire. It is so bad, the government will need to impose an emergency for 10 years to bring it around to a tolerable level. It must suspend teachers’ unions, get rid of the black sheep among teaching cadres, and retire the dead wood.

Secondly, it must enforce merit in the appointment of teachers, and put them under a system of rewards and punishments. For example, transfers, postings and promotions of teachers should be tied to their performance and output.

Then, the government needs to chalk out a strategy to end massive corruption in the education boards. Every student and every parent know that there are mafias that openly auction education grades to students. They charge hefty fees from students to improve their grades by tweaking their mark-sheets. The result is that students securing A-1 grades in Board exams often fail to score even 50 percent marks in entry tests for higher classes. That is the reason why our universities have been lowering their passing marks requirements every year.

The system was comparatively better managed until early 1980s. It deteriorated during the Islamisation drive of Gen Ziaul Haq’s military regime, and the weak political governments that followed during the 1990s. There was an overall decay in the society, triggering a patron-client political system in which lucrative state jobs were doled out on political grounds instead of merit and rules.

The disbursement of development funds among the federal and provincial legislators during the mid-1980s opened the floodgates of corruption, creating the urge among the ruling classes to get their own clients hold decision making positions in state institutions. Education was the worst sufferer. The once sacred school teachers’ jobs were doled out to half-lettered persons either on political grounds or in return for bribes. Since the rulers could afford to send their children to elite institutions, they were not bothered about what happened to the public at large.

Prof Dr Mohammad Memon
Chairman NACTE and Prof Emeritus Aga Khan University

I think it is already too late for the government to revamp the education system in keeping with the learning framework of the 21st century, advancement in science and technology, and a changing education landscape. We need to revamp our education vision, teacher training, curriculum, learning material, learning environment, assessment and examinations, and academic supervision for effective monitoring and governance.

Private education existed before Independence, but later it became more central because the public sector could not meet the demands for quality education. However, its role must be supplementary, not competitive. Successive governments have regulated fees and some other aspects of private education but have failed to put in place a wider regulatory framework. It is needed, because the government cannot provide education to all, and has to depend on private sector institutions.

Recently, the elite private institutions have started collaborating with the public sector institutions for their capacity building, which is good news.

It is very unfortunate that the education board results are not considered reliable due to prevailing malpractices and corruption in examinations. Students are assigned high grades that do not match their talent. But there are exceptions, such as the Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, Islamabad, and the Aga Khan University Examination Board.

Lecturing is the predominant mode of university education, and this has turned both teachers and students into consumers of knowledge rather than its creators. Students are highly dependent on their faculty notes, and their aim is just to pass exams rather than improve their academic and intellectual capacity.

It is very sad that students of both public and private sector institutions also join tuition centres. Their aim is to meet the deficit of learning in their respective schools, and to prepare for various examinations. Over the past decades, there has been a mushroom growth of tuition centres in the county, which is evidence that teachers of public and private intuitions, especially the former, have failed to educate students adequately.

Earlier, tuition centres used to be limited to only school education. Now they have expanded to college and university levels, and have become a thriving business. In the absence of any government regulations, these centres charge high fees which few middle- and lower-middle-class students can afford. The government must introduce a regulatory body to control their fees and other charges.