KARACHI: Sustained efforts urged to improve education sector
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, April 27: Speakers at a seminar stressed the need for having an identical vision and conceptual framework underlining innovative approaches for a sustainable quality of education in the country.
The seminar on "Generative learning process and institutional development" was organised by the Aga Khan Education Service (AKES) Pakistan with the support of the Education Sector Reform Assistance Programme (ESRAP) at a local hotel here on Thursday. A large number of teachers and those involved in school management practices attended the seminar.
Speaking as chief guest, Sindh Education Secretary Syed Ghulam Ali Pasha exhorted for an integrated approach which equally ensured inputs for quality, implementation and outcomes. It has been very clear from various initiatives and research studies that quality of schools or education can not be improved in isolation and as such there was a need for enrichment and sustainability of outcomes, while giving equal importance to inputs and processes, he added.
He held that the national education policy (1998-2010) clearly identified means for achieving the set targets through continuous improvement of curriculum, professional development of various stakeholders, but there were many missing links in the implementation of policies, which had resulted in the diminishing quality of educational institutions in the country.
Mr Pasha said that the improvement of schools required a coherent and holistic fashion for training of teachers and healthy and vibrant learning environment for students. He appreciated the AKES for its initiatives in the educational sector and its project on quality advancement through institutional development.
The CEO of the AKES, Sughra Choudhry Khan, said that while seeking to improve education, one must also treat schools as the living organisations or institutions which needed transformations as well.
The keynote speaker, Kamran Moosa, CEO of the Pakistan Institute of Quality Control, emphasised that the understanding of quality should be comprehensive and focus should be on processes rather than just outcomes, ie, examination results. He discussed the principles and practices of quality assurance in education and said that it was not just the quantity but the quality which led a country to rapid growth and industrialisation.
Mr Moosa said that the quality assurance framework of any institution was derived from its core objectives, therefore the right objectives of education must be set, both at the national and institutional levels, before designing the framework. He broadly classified the objectives in three categories, social excellence, national and academic excellence.
Coming on to the quality of teachers, Mr Moosa said that a highly qualified teacher did not mean high quality teacher. For a teacher to be good, he or she will have to build capabilities in many other fields, in addition to the subject matter, he added and pointed out that there were four dimensions of an effective or quality teachers-academic competence in theory and practical, teaching skills, good understanding of student psychology and commitment and motivational skills.
Underscoring the importance of communication in the teaching process, he said that it was not just the language but also the logical complexity of text as well as teacher which made the communication effective or ineffective.
Yasmeen Bano of the AKES discussed the dimensions and processes for institutional strengthening of schools. She said that it was important to provide extensive support to schools in development planning, which was a multidimensional and difficult process requiring good thinking, planning and organizing skills both at the planning and implementation levels.
A group of educationists also discussed how schools should be supported in reaching quality indicators and highlighted the role of public sector in that regard. It was exhorted that quality assurance without adequate and in-depth support to schools would not be a very useful or suitable strategy.
