AS an educationist, part of my job is to conduct interviews, and I have interviewed many individuals with splendid CVs, their ambition leaping off the pages, almost all of them expressing the desire to work in a professional and challenging space. In-person meetings, however, have been a different story.

Take, for instance, this exchange: “Ghalib is my favourite poet.”

“Oh, how wonderful! Can you recite a few couplets by Ghalib then?”

“You see, I did my MA in Urdu six months ago; I don’t remember any by Ghalib ... but, I can recite a few couplets from Shiko Jawab-i-Shiko by Iqbal. ‘Mohabbat mujhe unn jawanon... ’.”

Hundreds, if not thousands, of students who have never been in a classroom or attended a lecture, are allowed to ‘pass’ their exams.

I don’t know whether to describe the above incident as comical, ironic, tragic or all three; a fresh MA graduate not being able to correctly pronounce Shikwa Jawab-i-Shikwa and not able to recite a single couplet by Ghalib.

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My memory takes me back to several such interviews I have conducted over the last decade. Sadly, the majority of those with a Master’s degree in math and the sciences exhibited the same level of familiarity with their respective subjects. The most bizarre incident involved a BSc graduate in physics: “I can’t explain area and volume to kids, as I did them back in school. We do more complex equations at the BSc level, they don’t involve plus, minus, multiplication or division.”

A shared attribute of a significant number of such candidates was that they had obtained their degrees from various universities of Punjab and KP as private students or, in the case of the sciences, the universities enrolled them as students of their affiliated colleges. The majority had never attended those colleges. I often wondered why they had such poor knowledge of their respective subjects. The answer eluded me until the time I decided to study for a Master’s degree myself!

Mr Kaveh, a former teacher of an elite school in Islamabad, had once mentioned to me that he had appeared for the BEd exams and passed after a day’s preparation for each paper. The only time a friend’s sister could spare to prepare for her degree in MA Urdu was while she cooked. She cooked and at the same time studied from the book on the kitchen counter. She passed the exam too.

It seemed doable. I asked Mr Kaveh to help me with the process of enrolment. As the deadline was just round the corner, I had to pay an urgent fee of more than Rs100,000 to be registered at the university. I was given 10 guide books for 10 papers and a few choices. I could mark my attendance on exam day and come back, or I could hand over the paper, without attempting it, after listing my roll number ie someone else could go instead and take the exam for me. Lastly, if I really did want to attempt the paper myself, then my answers to the questions had to be below par, else I risked losing marks.

That’s how easy it was to get hold of a Master’s degree in Pakistan. I needed the degree to reinforce my credentials to secure admission abroad. Studying abroad was a dream I had long forgotten as I dealt with life as a single parent. Finally, I was being given an opportunity to realise my dream.

However, my conscience did not allow me to proceed; I was a teacher, I would never be able to tell my students to act with dignity had I gone ahead with it.

Nonetheless, the whole exercise, in addition to inducing a sense of melancholy, had given me insight into our decaying system of education. I knew why the candidates I interviewed were generally clueless about their subject matter. Hundreds, if not thousands, of such graduates across the country, who have never been in a classroom or attended a lecture, are allowed to ‘pass’ their exams by these university boards.

Read: Is education a priority?

One reason that students use the methods mentioned here to appear in exams, could be that there aren’t enough colleges and universities to accommodate the thousands of matriculates being added to the system each year. Very few make their way to such acclaimed institutes as Lums and Nust; the rest attend street colleges housed in tiny buildings that have bought themselves affiliations with different universities. These colleges have exam-oriented preparation systems, where the focus is on rote learning and solving past papers. They just have to achieve 33 per cent marks to sail through the exams, and they do. The rest appear as private students.

A similar trend can be seen in the intermediate and secondary exams. The majority of students competing for matriculation exams pass, with a significant number scoring marks above 80pc. The overall pass percentage of the Board of Intermediate & Secondary Education Lahore last year was an astounding 98pc, with dozens obtaining 1,100 out of 1,100 marks. Boards in other provinces tell a similar story.

Thousands of degree holders emerging from this system have to then look for suitable jobs. Some of them are inducted back into the education sector mostly at government schools and schools in villages, towns and impoverished areas of metropolises across the country. It is important to note here that the difference in the quality of education being imparted between schools of a particular chain in affluent neighbourhoods and middle-class surroundings is stark and shocking as the staff employed are area-specific. This becomes a vicious cycle. These degree holders are now the teachers imparting knowledge to students.

When one such teacher in a KP village was asked to solve a Grade 6-level math problem, he couldn’t. And a matriculate who had gained 91pc marks in the board exams from another village in the same area could only solve one out the 15 math problems presented to her. What goes around, comes around, they say.

The cycle continues but the authorities in Pakis­tan are more concerned with carrying out war-like raids on schools to ensure the rote learning of religi­ous texts, banning jeans and making dupattas and topis mandatory, never mind the fundamental moral-code at stake in this corrupt system of education.

The writer is an educationist.

Published in Dawn, February 3rd, 2022