Take school to the child
Published October 30, 2024
DAWN
PAKISTAN is in the midst of a critical education crisis, with over 22.8 million children aged five to 16 years out of school, placing it second only to Nigeria in this context. The situation is especially dire for girls, with 53 per cent out of school as compared to 43pc of boys. Declaring a national education emergency, Pakistan identifies poverty, lack of infrastructure, cultural barriers, child labour, and early marriages as core obstacles.
Innovative solutions are required. Traditional efforts focus on bringing children to schools, yet many children living near these institutes of learning don’t attend, often perceiving education as irrelevant. This signals a need to (a) connect education with job opportunities and (b) customise schooling to meet children’s needs. To date, all conversations have focused on bringing the childto school. We need to now think of the reverse.
A promising model is hybrid technical and vocational education and training, which equips children with job skills alongside basic literacy. Hybrid TVET bridges the gap between education and work readiness, focusing on out-of-school children. It merges academic learning with vocational skills such as carpentry, tailoring, IT, plumbing, and agriculture, enabling children to acquire lifelong learning skills and employment options.
Hybrid TVET is a flexible answer to Pakistan’s education crisis.
A significant education barrier in rural Pakistan is the lack of accessible schools and training centres. Mobile vocational training units address this by bringing education directly to remote communities. These mobile units, equipped with training materials and technology, can deliver both academic and vocational education. A few years back, a pilot project was conducted by an international funding agency. Lessons learnt from it need to be mainstreamed and its success amplified.
The mobile model proves especially valuable in conflict zones, where establishing permanent schools is difficult. Flexible schedules allow children to work part-time if essential, and baseline assessments can lead to formal certification.
For girls, community-based learning centres with local women educators can provide safe, culturally appropriate spaces. These centres can offer literacy, numeracy, and skills like sewing, embroidery, and food preparation. Integrating these skills into local economic activities enables girls to contribute through community projects in sustainable agriculture or small-scale businesses.
Expanding internet access, with over 116m mobile broadband users as of 2021, can make online and blended learning transformative, especially in the urban areas. Hybrid TVET can leverage these platforms, using online courses and in-person practical sessions to teach vocational skills. For instance, children can learn IT online and gain hands-on experience in local vocational centres.
These online platforms can connect with existing TVET institutions, allowing remote learners access to the same curricula and certifications as in-person students.
Pakistan also hosts a significant refugee population, including over 1.4m registered Afghan refugees, many of whom face disrupted education. Integrating hybrid TVET into refugee programmes can provide essential skills and education, fostering resilience and rebuilding communities. TVET in refugee camps could offer vocational training in fields like carpentry or tailoring, alongside basic literacy and numeracy to support self-sufficiency.
To further encourage school attendance, conditional cash transfers or stipends can aid low-income families. Expanding the Benazir Income Support Programme to include hybrid TVET would incentivise families to enrol children in vocational training programmes, providing financial support where child labour is common. Such financial incentives could be especially effective in rural areas, where families often rely on children’s earnings. By offering stipends for participation in hybrid TVET, families’ economic burden can be sustainably eased.
Pakistan’s out-of-school children represent both a challenge and an opportunity. By adopting innovative solutions like hybrid TVET, Pakistan can educate marginalised children and equip them with the essential job skills. From mobile training units to online platforms and community-based centres, several strategies exist to bring education directly to underserved children.
Hybrid TVET is a flexible, practical answer to Pakistan’s education crisis, providing a path to literacy, life skills, and employment.
The time to act is now: Pakistan’s children deserve an education that prepares them for a brighter future, and hybrid TVET can unlock that potential.
The writer is chairperson, National Vocational and Technical Training Commission.
chairperson@navttc.gov.pk
Published in Dawn, October 30th, 2024
Language tyranny
Zubeida Mustafa
Published November 1, 2024
SINCE an education emergency was declared in Pakistan — for the second time — education has entered the public discourse with a bang. Seminars are being held frequently while the media has been addressing the issue much more than before. But nothing is changing on the ground. In this bleak scenario, comes a heartwarming announcement
Baela Raza Jamil, the dynamic CEO of Idara-i-Taaleem-o-Agahi (ITA) has been awarded the Global Education Medal for the Asian region. It is to Baela’s credit that she is one of the rare ones in the education sector in Pakistan who has walked the talk and her undertakings have had an impact on millions.
She launched the Pakistan Learning Festival that has been an informal learning experience for thousands of children since 2011. She set up ASER (Pakistan) in 2008 to test children’s learning outcome all over the country. Of late, she has made her debut as a publisher of children’s books. What is important is her inclusive approach vis-à-vis the indigenous languages in her scheme of things.
It is unfortunate that Baela’s recommendations on various educational problems have failed to move our policymakers with whom she has constantly engaged. An issue that has bothered me for decades now — Baela understands my concern — is that of the language of education. It appears that government, society, educationists, school managers and even parents have joined hands to ‘tyrannise’ the child and sacrifice the joys of childhood at the ‘altar of the English language’.
There is something seriously wrong with our hybrid pedagogy.
Some government functionaries and academics now discreetly concede that an overwhelming majority of teachers are not proficient in English and that affects their pedagogic performance. Yet no initiative has been taken to change the ambivalent language policy that is in place.
Neither is there any advocacy campaign to create awareness of the stupidity of imposing the English language on young children in the initial phase of their schooling. Not being familiar with it they are overawed by it. If the mother tongue or the language of the environment is used in early childhood and a few years of primary education, children will find school to be a friendly and welcoming place. The transition to another language will be painless when the change-over is gradual and takes place at an appropriate stage when the student is psychologically and mentally ready for it.
There is something seriously wrong with the hybrid pedagogy which allows the teacher to speak in Urdu, while the books are in English, and the students are expected to speak, read and write in English. This pattern will continue until the language factor is taken into account. It may be added that the child will be dumbed and will rote learn and never be able to think critically.
The fact is that we are regressing. Until last year, Sindh had, relatively speaking, a sane language in education policy: the medium of instruction in all public sector schools was Sindhi and Urdu in areas inhabited by Sindhi and Urdu speakers respectively. Each community learned the other’s language as a compulsory second language. The private schools, however, were inadvisably left to their own devices.
Today, under the unwritten orders of a district education officer, English is the medium of instruction in specified public sector schools in District South of Karachi. We shall never know about the disastrous impact of this policy because the ever-obliging examination board is infamous for producing desired results that are not a valid assessment of candidates.
As a consequence, education has lost all credibility. The focus is now on quantity. The 26 million out-of-school children in Pakistan have become a scourge for the country. Paradoxically in this dismal scenario, lan-guage — the divider between the rich and the poor — finds no mention. And it will not. Our neoliberals and their backers know very well that the fast-growing inequity in our society has been spawned by our market-driven education system in which the rich attend upscale elite schools while the poor go to the tottering public sector and low-fee private institutions which cannot teach English. Who benefits from this class-ridden system? Of course the neo-liberals, who thrive in the globalised world of today.
We cannot say we have not been warned. One has to read Robert Phillipson (Linguistic Imperialism), Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed), Antonio Gramsci’s views on language and education, and of course, Dr Maria Montessori (The Absorbent Mind).
Those in a position of power have also managed to create a paradoxical condition of coercion and consent that ensures that there is no public resistance to the language policy in vogue.
Advocates of children’s language rights stand isolated.
Baela Raza Jamil, the dynamic CEO of Idara-i-Taaleem-o-Agahi (ITA) has been awarded the Global Education Medal for the Asian region. It is to Baela’s credit that she is one of the rare ones in the education sector in Pakistan who has walked the talk and her undertakings have had an impact on millions.
She launched the Pakistan Learning Festival that has been an informal learning experience for thousands of children since 2011. She set up ASER (Pakistan) in 2008 to test children’s learning outcome all over the country. Of late, she has made her debut as a publisher of children’s books. What is important is her inclusive approach vis-à-vis the indigenous languages in her scheme of things.
It is unfortunate that Baela’s recommendations on various educational problems have failed to move our policymakers with whom she has constantly engaged. An issue that has bothered me for decades now — Baela understands my concern — is that of the language of education. It appears that government, society, educationists, school managers and even parents have joined hands to ‘tyrannise’ the child and sacrifice the joys of childhood at the ‘altar of the English language’.
There is something seriously wrong with our hybrid pedagogy.
Some government functionaries and academics now discreetly concede that an overwhelming majority of teachers are not proficient in English and that affects their pedagogic performance. Yet no initiative has been taken to change the ambivalent language policy that is in place.
Neither is there any advocacy campaign to create awareness of the stupidity of imposing the English language on young children in the initial phase of their schooling. Not being familiar with it they are overawed by it. If the mother tongue or the language of the environment is used in early childhood and a few years of primary education, children will find school to be a friendly and welcoming place. The transition to another language will be painless when the change-over is gradual and takes place at an appropriate stage when the student is psychologically and mentally ready for it.
There is something seriously wrong with the hybrid pedagogy which allows the teacher to speak in Urdu, while the books are in English, and the students are expected to speak, read and write in English. This pattern will continue until the language factor is taken into account. It may be added that the child will be dumbed and will rote learn and never be able to think critically.
The fact is that we are regressing. Until last year, Sindh had, relatively speaking, a sane language in education policy: the medium of instruction in all public sector schools was Sindhi and Urdu in areas inhabited by Sindhi and Urdu speakers respectively. Each community learned the other’s language as a compulsory second language. The private schools, however, were inadvisably left to their own devices.
Today, under the unwritten orders of a district education officer, English is the medium of instruction in specified public sector schools in District South of Karachi. We shall never know about the disastrous impact of this policy because the ever-obliging examination board is infamous for producing desired results that are not a valid assessment of candidates.
As a consequence, education has lost all credibility. The focus is now on quantity. The 26 million out-of-school children in Pakistan have become a scourge for the country. Paradoxically in this dismal scenario, lan-guage — the divider between the rich and the poor — finds no mention. And it will not. Our neoliberals and their backers know very well that the fast-growing inequity in our society has been spawned by our market-driven education system in which the rich attend upscale elite schools while the poor go to the tottering public sector and low-fee private institutions which cannot teach English. Who benefits from this class-ridden system? Of course the neo-liberals, who thrive in the globalised world of today.
We cannot say we have not been warned. One has to read Robert Phillipson (Linguistic Imperialism), Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed), Antonio Gramsci’s views on language and education, and of course, Dr Maria Montessori (The Absorbent Mind).
Those in a position of power have also managed to create a paradoxical condition of coercion and consent that ensures that there is no public resistance to the language policy in vogue.
Advocates of children’s language rights stand isolated.
www.zubeida-mustafa.com
Published in Dawn, November 1st, 2024
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