Education Failing to deliver quality

Stage 2: Failure to deliver quality

Pakistan’s education sector is anomalous in that it has three parallel and largely unconnected systems of education operating simultaneously. These are the public and non elite private schools, the elite private schools, and the religious seminaries—the madrasahs. Approximately 67% of the school going children are enrolled in public schools, close to 29% are in private schools—the majority of these are in the non-elite variant—and 4% attend madrasahs (see table 2). The three systems follow their own curricula, teaching methods, and examination processes. Consequently, quality of education and the type of student body in each vary greatly. Only the public education system is fully regulated by the government.

Table 2: Parallel streams of education

The 3 education systems are broadly stratified along 3 dimensions:

1. Socio-economic
2. Qualitative
3. Ideological

The madrasahs system largely caters to children from the poorest segment of society. The majority of public school and non-elite private school students belong to the lower-middle to middle socio-economic groups.

Elite private schools apply stringent socio-economic screening and are reserved exclusively for the rich. So isolated are these systems that students go through their school life (and even adult life) without having the opportunity to engage intellectually across systems. The education sector therefore ends up producing three distinct cohorts from within the Pakistani youth, each quite cut-off from the other.

In terms of quality, madrasahs have the greatest mismatch with the requirements of modern economies. They are essentially geared towards producing cadres suitable only for the clerical sphere; this makes them misfits for mainstream employment opportunities.

The public education and a large proportion of the non-elite private schools—together account for the overwhelming majority of Pakistani students—also suffer from extreme qualitative shortcomings. This is manifested in the learning outcomes, curricula, textbooks and other learning materials, assessments, teacher quality, and the learning environment. Although they teach all subjects expected of modern school systems, they follow fixed syllabi, which encourage rote learning—memorisation. The medium of instruction in public schools is predominantly Urdu; they even lack the capacity to develop a minimum level of proficiency in the English language, which is necessary for most white-collar jobs.

The relatively small number of elite private schools are the only ones that provide decent quality education. They use English as the medium of learning and are ahead of the others in terms of teaching standards and learning outcomes. Most of them encourage objectivity and creative thinking among students. It is hardly surprising then that parents who send their children to private schools are found to be far more satisfied than those whose kids attend public schools or formal madrasahs.

The third layer of stratification is ideological. Though there is considerably greater overlap across systems in this case, in general one can attribute distinct and often irreconcilable world visions across the three systems. Pakistani madrasahs may not be actively engaged in producing militants as the West has suspected for long but they do produce graduates with narrow-minded ideological biases. In her research on madrasahs, Christine Fair (2006; 2007) argues that these cadres are much more likely to sympathise with Islamists where they are welcomed and given a positive identity. The syllabi of the public schooling system are closely managed by the state and provide a highly skewed historical narrative that is nationalistic and creates a siege mentality by portraying Pakistan as being perpetually under threat from all corners. The content also meshes Islam with nationalism and presents the two as being intrinsically linked.

The roots of this anomaly lie in the 1980s when agenda-driven education was deliberately used as a political tool and textbooks were rewritten to inject a definitive anti-India and pan-Islamic bias. The elite private schools, while being bound by the state to follow the prescribed narrative in subjects such as Pakistan Studies, have more leeway given their unregulated nature. In addition, the economic stratum their students belong to allows them more physical and informational exposure to the Western style of life and leaves them less susceptible to accepting the curriculum biases at face value.

The divergent outlooks of these 3 cohorts are evident from who they look up to and which direction they want their country to take.

Madrasah students tend to be amenable to the extremist world-view.

Students from the public schools, who are perhaps most representative of mainstream society, idealise legendary Muslim historical figures but do retain some admiration for figures known for their anti-West outlook.

Products of the private schools talk fondly of Hollywood stars, personalities in the arts and theatre, international sportsmen and the like. Overwhelming majorities of private school-educated youth seem to view Turkey as a model for Pakistan to replicate. This is fundamentally different than the preference of their less privileged counterparts who are more likely to mention Iran or Saudi Arabia.

Frustration, alienation, internal discord and polarisation are built into the education system. The isolation and divergent outlooks of the three variants make for a divided polity. Indeed, the perceptions of the country’s youth validate this. Children of the elite are highly dismissive of their Urdu medium counterparts and intolerant of young rural men, especially those from lower socio-economic backgrounds. A sizable segment from within the elite schools considers itself superior and more progressive than the rest. Madrasah students on the other hand blame the elite for having robbed them of necessary resources and causing hardship for the rest of society.

Their sense of alienation and deprivation is shared by the public school, and to a lesser extent non elite private school students and provides an opening to Islamists to cash in on a ‘haves versus have nots’ narrative. These disparate visions also make it virtually impossible to forge a consensus on a national narrative in Pakistan.

Stage 3: Failure to provide livelihoods.

Educational attainment is a double-edged sword. While lack of education disqualifies youth from attaining economic mobility and is thus undesirable, high level of 272education without the requisite outlet to apply skills raises expectations which, if unfulfilled for long, can create an ’expectation-reality disconnect’. Again, the latter makes the excluded disgruntled with the system, which not only keeps potentially productive human capacity from engaging in constructive endeavours but also acts as a violence inducing factor.

Surveys suggest that an overwhelming majority of young men and women in Pakistan want to work provided suitable opportunities— commensurate with their educational attainment—are made available. Unfortunately, access to desirable employment in Pakistan is as unequal as provision for high quality education. While Pakistan’s labour market has expanded, and the unemployment rate has declined to an impressive 5.32 per cent, the improvement is unable to keep up with the large pool of employable youth. In fact, youth employment has only dropped marginally since 1990 and even many who were employed at one time fell back into the unemployed category. To be sure, the majority of non-elite young citizens can only find relatively menial jobs and are thus underemployed. The public sector is inherently corrupt and job openings are rarely awarded on merit. Children of the poor, with generally little access to the corridors of power and already disadvantaged by the poor skill set developed in public schools, are invariably the first to be denied these prized positions.

The private sector has expanded tremendously in recent years and presents many more lucrative opportunities. Ironically however, the combination of the private sector’s growth and a virtual breakdown of the public sector act to increase the inequality in opportunities for graduates of private versus public schools. Private sector firms solicit employees with diverse exposures, a broad knowledge base, good English language skills, and robust analytical ability. The only young adults that fit the bill are products of elite private schools or foreign colleges (the latter are exclusively members of elite households). In fact, so blatant is the bias against public, non-elite private, and madrasah graduates that recruiters explicitly put a premium on foreign and elite local degrees. A disproportionate amount of entry level positions thus end up going to the already rich, leaving those from lower socio-economic classes underemployed. For educated (even if poorly) young men, underemployment ends up having just as much of an alienating effect as unemployment.

There is evidence aplenty of the coming crisis. Increasingly, reasonably eloquent, post-secondary degree holders are seeking financial help—that is to say, begging—on the streets of urban towns in Pakistan.

These are young men very different from the stereotypical beggars that dot the streets of Pakistani cities and have been forced to the street by the labour market crunch. Detailed discussions with such individuals reveal great contempt for a state that cannot provide opportunities.

There is also envy and resentment against the elite who are believed to have deliberately created entry barriers for the poor, and there is a sense of alienation from the larger society.