ISLAMABAD: As 26 million children remain out of schools despite an education emergency and enhanced focus on this problem, the new educational framework has called for a two-pronged approach to address this issue, while also saying that the sector “remains on the outer margins of policy priorities”.

The ‘National Education Policy Development Framework’ is expected to be launched by Education Minister Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui and Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal in the capital today.

The framework covers a range of issues, from school education to higher and technical education. In reference to the out-of-school children, the framework said: “The problem is ongoing and cannot be simply seen as a return of these 26 million back into education processes. Any sustainable solution will require assessment and redressal of all causes that lead children to either not join or drop out.”

“The option of non-formal education as a second chance opportunity to return children to schools or education will require a high policy priority to achieve this objective. At present, despite increased focus, the sector remains on the outer margins of policy priorities,” said the document, while advocating a two-pronged policy approach: eliminate causes of dropout and provide second chance education through relevant non-formal education.

Framework advocates child-centred approach, highlights quality learning as primary component

Addressing causes of dropout, the framework stated that one part of the enhancement of access was by improving the quality of learning, but there were other important areas as well, mostly on the supply side.

“Non-availability of schools or, in some cases, a functional school means children do not have opportunities to join any institution…in many places, cultural reasons still hold for children being out of school. This would apply, in many cases, to the female child… Part of the resistance comes from genuine safety concerns where girls may be vulnerable to risks when travelling to schools,” it said.

The document added that access to school and expansion of schooling opportunities continued to be within the limited, traditional set of primary, middle, and secondary. “In the public sector, the primary to middle bottleneck also reduces the ability of children to progress in schools.”

The new framework also stated that there is a need to study the success and scalability of remedial programs, and specialised remedial learning has to be designed for post-primary levels.

Education challenges

The education challenges can be broken into four different sub-heads: learning, access and participation, relevance, and equity, according to the document.

“When education reforms received a new impetus in the early years of this century, there was a misplaced understanding that access can be prioritised over learning. Pakistan, and the world, has since learnt that the learning challenge drags down all achievements in access. Policies cannot sequence the four areas. All have to be addressed simultaneously with learning as the most central component to ensure irreversible progress.”

It said that poor learning was an outcome often blamed on the teacher, and many interventions in the past had been focused on increasing the quality of the teacher through merit-based recruitments, strong professional development programs, and even rigorous monitoring in some of the provinces, but none of these have produced adequate results.

The failure probably lies in the inability to view poor teaching as the result of multiple inputs, including the teacher. “At the core of the learning challenge is a failure to understand the child, their context, and the need to be child-centred in policies,” it added.

The new framework also highlighted the shortage of teachers. Punjab alone, as per the government’s calculations has a shortage of 160,000 teachers.

The definition of shortage also needs to be considered as per the requirements of the curriculum. At the secondary level, a student is expected to study 8 subjects, five of which are compulsory. The number of subjects is 8 at the middle level, and at the primary level, there are 5 (in some cases 6) subjects in grade 1, and these increase to 7 by grade 4. As the level increases, the requirement of specialisation increases.

“The numbers that demonstrate shortages as per posts hide many details like shortfalls in specific subjects, especially at the middle, secondary, and higher secondary levels. The further disaggregation of shortages, particularly of subject specialists, across schools for boys and girls and rural and urban areas shows that in particular girls and children in rural areas have lower access to specialist teachers,” read the framework.

At the primary level, multi-grade teaching is also common, it said. In Balochistan, nearly 82pc primary schools had either one or two teachers. The requirements in terms of numbers will increase if policies target reduction and eventual elimination of single-teacher primary schools, even if multigrade teaching is not completely abolished.

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2024