User:Ahmedabdul.azeem/Education Sector in Pakistan

SETTING UP DIRECTION & POLICY

Education in Pakistan

by: Ahmed Abdulazeem

PREAMBLE

Pakistan is currently at a pass – a difficult and unpleasant situation, desperately in need of concerted assistance from all quarters to help it sail on its path to the success. This situation opens opportunities for every person to play an active role in this cause by upholding honesty, morality and responsibility.

Success needs direction and policy. Once direction is set, policy is developed, procedures are designed, and implementation follows that paves the way for ultimate success. Every aspect of life needs success; therefore, setting up direction and policy becomes crucially the first step.

Education is one of the top priorities of Pakistan. Unfortunately, in this core sector, many issues have never been questioned. Many questions have never been answered. Many answers have never been analysed and gauged at the parameters of purpose and objective. Moreover, where the purpose and objectives have been identified, it has never been assessed whether it serves the purpose of Pakistan and its people.

It is time now to ensure that Education system is set up with the overriding objective of developing Pakistan and the people of Pakistan.

CHALLENGES

Setting up direction and policy in the Education sector in Pakistan, needs answers to the core questions such as:

- What education are we providing to the people of Pakistan and why?

- Is current education direction and policy right for the growth of people and the development of the country?

- What we need to teach to our people to face the present and future global challenges?

- How to utilise education in the development of Pakistan and its people?

Every individual person living in Pakistan is valuable as nobody knows who can do wonder for the country and the nation. Pakistan is getting benefit out of highly qualified and talented people serving it within the country. A sizeable population is working abroad and still serving Pakistan through its hard earned money which it remits to Pakistan. In all fairness, Pakistan and the people of Pakistan should give value and respect to the fellow Pakistani citizens living locally, nationally and internationally.

It should be a job of the whole nation to begin to feel responsible for every individual or groups of like people. They should be judged for their worth or quality and assessed how best they can be used to serve the country and the nation.

Currently Education sector in Pakistan needs direction and policy so that its populace can become educated and qualified to achieve one of the important purposes of generating economic activity for their own betterment and the betterment of the country. They must become urgently valuable locally and/or internationally.

Pakistan is gifted by highly diversified populace with peculiar characteristics, intellect and visions. It is essential to educate them in a manner, which is helpful in development of Pakistan.

Arguably, current situation in Pakistan would consider it a loss if a person gets a qualification, which will neither provide him a job locally or abroad; which will not help in earning him livelihood, or which does not open opportunities in life for him. This would be construed as wastage of his time, money and resources. In fact, his personal loss is a loss of Pakistan and its populace as Pakistan cannot bear any loss may it be economic, financial, human resource, social, ethical, posed by circumstances locally, nationally or internationally.

PARAMETERS

The objective of deciding the direction and policy for Education in Pakistan should be to identify those sectors, which are going to be beneficial for the ultimate development of Pakistan socially and more important economically. This direction should cover two parallel periods, one long term say covering a period of 25 years and second short term covering a period of 5 years.

Long term

A period of 25 years normally covers initial lifespan of individual’s educational life wherein he attains Bachelor/Masters qualification and/or professional qualification equivalent thereto. Beneficially even one off study will cover a whole generation and would seek answers to the questions such as:

- What qualifications would be essential for growth of Pakistan in 25 years time?

- What qualifications would be in demand globally in 25 years time?

- What curriculum should be drafted, what qualifications should be developed, what educational methods and strategies should be evolved to help Pakistan listed in top educationally accomplished nations in the world?

- How to keep a sizeable population ready for export and work outside country to achieve following objectives:

 > to develop a stable base for generation of foreign exchange through remittances
 > to make countries realise that Pakistani qualified people are crucial for the sectors in which they are working

Short term

In order to address urgent issues, following objectives will drive the short term direction and policy:

- What are the basic skills such as Numeracy, Literacy that are essential for every individual person in their lives?

- What subjects, qualifications and courses should be completely scrapped as their benefit to the people and country had been limited and their resources should be utilised in other areas?

- What subjects, qualifications and courses should receive continuous but limited priority?

- What supplementary supports students should get to qualify for working abroad?

- How to develop Teachers and Teaching resources base?

- How to expand educational facilities to the wider populace?

METHODOLOGY

To start setting up direction and policy for Education sector in Pakistan, we propose as follows:

- identifying sectors which are Pakistan’s strengths such as Agriculture, Mining, Accountancy

- identifying sectors which have played roles in development of other countries such as Electronics for Far Eastern countries; Mining for Chile; Education for UK

- identifying the sectors in which the countries will be competing in 25 years time such as Advanced Energy, High Tech Warfare, Space, this identification will be possible by studying the direction and policies set by various countries for their future growth

- to develop Focus Groups for every major sector identified involving sector specialists to identify expected size of the qualified people required for respective sectors

- to work towards identifying the human resource that will be required in respective sectors in 25 years time

- to develop country focus groups which will study fast growing nations to identify their current and future priorities and developing policies and procedures as to how Pakistan can grow its human resource in those areas by developing and getting ready for exporting to those countries

- to identify the resources which will be required to meet the educational requirements in 25 years time

INFORMATION ABOUT WRITER

Ahmed Abdulazeem is a Chartered Accountant from Pakistan and based in London, UK. This document is first in series of further write ups on the issues involving Pakistan.