Pakistan, like other countries, celebrated World Teachers’ Day last month, sporadically and without much fanfare. A few government offices, private organisations and NGOs held functions to acknowledge the role of teachers in the country. Despite the speeches lauding the exceptional job of a teacher and the necessity to engage in dialogue to better their status, nothing concrete was on offer. Nothing could be more indicative of the ‘laissez faire’ attitude that exists in Pakistan’s society towards teachers’ acceptance as a professional body worth of note.

There is no denying the fact that teachers constitute the largest workforce in most countries of the world. Celebrating Teachers’ Day across the globe means paying homage to the services rendered by teachers in an individual capacity and on a larger platform that serves nations. At the same time, demands of the 21st century make teachers’ contributions a key factor in giving impetus to the social and economic wellbeing of nations. Designating a World Teachers’ Day underpins the need to acknowledge and protect those whose services strengthen the foundation on which humanity builds its civilisation.

However, the beleaguered status of a teacher in the Pakistan of today is all too evident. Even though teachers’ unions exist, an alarming number of teachers barely make a respectable living in any sense of the word. The respect accorded to teachers as those who impart knowledge and as upright mentors and guides seems mainly a thing of the past. In private organisations, they are mostly hired on a contract basis which carries its own particular negative pressures. Government-sector teachers in recent years have come to be hired without real consideration to merit (except on paper). A lack of accountability renders many of them to be “absentee” teachers. In the low income private schools, teachers can be as lowly paid as a thousand rupees a month. Some teachers are barely matriculates and have been hired to teach by unscrupulous employers running all kinds of schools.

A more worrying disparity in terms of teaching standards comes from the Urdu medium/English medium divide. Educational backgrounds and schooling impact directly on the kind of teaching/learning experiences teachers bring into the classroom. Being untrained, most are hired on the basis of their degrees which, as is apparent now, can be of little value and do not meet international standards. As a result, teachers hired under these circumstances are usually unable to perform on a level expected of them or capable of using pedagogical approaches that enable better learning by students.

Even though the steady lowering of standards in the teacher workforce became visible in the past 20-30 years, no system-wide reform was instituted to raise standards. Instead, a four to five hour’s teacher training workshops became the norm for both public and private sector schools. Abroad, these workshops are meant for continuing professional development as teachers there have already acquired an educational base by passing a certified course. Another step to apprise the untrained teacher is teacher’s guides which are expected to be provided with every textbook written for the Pakistan National Curriculum, 2006. To simplify teaching even further for the uninformed teacher, lesson plans for each chapter of the textbook are planned ahead and teachers instructed to follow them to a tee in some schools.

The teacher is said to be the main player in the classroom on whose delivery and use of educational material rests the quality of learning. If the teacher is not professionally qualified to teach with a base in educational know-how, standards of education will not improve as expressly desired. The base has to be an intensive course of certification for all who wish to take up teaching (after a BA, BSc or MA, MSc degree) which ensures that the teacher is acquiring all those skills which are the bare essentials in the education of a child. Only then can Continuing Professional Development workshops make sense to a teacher and strengthen his/her skills further. A professionally-qualified teacher i.e., certified according to a set of uniform standards, is the urgent need of the hour to uplift the standard and status of teachers in Pakistan. Firstly, a certified teacher workforce is likely to obtain that respectability and trust in the public’s eyes as a worthy professional. Secondly, a professionally certified teacher gains the self-assurance and self-confidence to advance in their chosen career and make that pledge of commitment and dedication to a sacred profession. If we take the example of doctors, it takes five years in a medical school and then a year’s work as interns for doctors to become professionally qualified to treat ailing patients. They also take a pledge at graduation to serve ailing humanity to the best of their abilities. The same can be said for engineers, business graduates, military personnel, and civil servants — in fact people train ahead to be able to enter their chosen field of work.

Since no mechanism is in place for teachers to train before being hired as professionals, the state must commit itself to make teaching a certified profession at par with others in order for teachers to gain a professional standing in the country. School teachers in Pakistan must be professionally qualified; professionally competent; professionally motivated; and feel secure in their profession to reap the benefits of a dignified and elevated status in society. Unless that happens, the haphazard teacher training, BEd and MEd degrees and the recently introduced undergraduate and associate degrees in education are unlikely to stem the continuing downward trend in teacher quality and status and of educational standards in the country.

The writer is an educational consultant based in Lahore.

ismatriaz70@gmail.com