OVER the last few years, all the provinces have undertaken significant ‘reforms’ in areas related to teachers: recruitment, entry requirements, compensation, deployment, career paths, teacher monitoring and evaluation, induction training, in-service training, and in-class support in teaching. These reforms have cost a significant amount and have also taken a lot of effort. But two questions are important: what have these ‘reforms’ accomplished and, going by the achievements, were they worth all the effort and expense?

On the recruitment side, almost all the provinces have moved towards making the recruitment processes more transparent, objective and test-based (through the National Testing Service) and have succeeded in reducing, if not eliminating, outright nepotism and corruption in the recruitment process. They have also increased entry requirements for graduation at least, and given the recruitments of the last 10 years or so, the percentage of non-degree holders in the public-sector teaching force has decreased significantly. As older teachers retire, the composition of the teaching force will change completely.

Almost all the provinces have raised teachers’ salaries and they have also (at least some of them), changed the service grades of teachers: in Punjab, primary school teachers have been moved from grade 9 to grade 14, and those who were in grade 14 and above have been moved up one grade each.

The provinces have invested in teachers but learning outcomes are hardly impressive.

There have been large and significant changes on the monitoring, evaluation and accountability side. Monitors have been hired to visit schools once or twice a month to check on teachers and teaching, attendance is reported regularly and monitored, class-based testing has been introduced to keep an eye on what children are learning, and in two provinces high-stakes testing has been introduced to check student-learning levels at various points in the schooling cycle (grades 5 and 8 in Punjab and grade 5 in Sindh). Teachers are regularly evaluated on the basis of monitoring visits and, in some places, are even graded. Low grades can have consequences for their career paths.

Almost all provinces have started induction training for teachers where those who are hired are given a few weeks of training in pedagogical methods and some remedial knowledge of content before they are allocated schools or classes. Some of the provinces have also started professional development programmes for teachers that provide not only support through periodic trainings in specific pedagogic or content areas but also continuous on-the-job support.

All of these changes have cost a lot. Punjab alone has some 400,000-odd public school teachers. Even relatively modest salary changes for such large numbers lead to outlays of billions of rupees. This year more than 100,000 new teachers have been inducted across the provinces. Again, the implications of the outlay are significant. Training more than a million teachers and providing them with professional support is neither easy nor cheap.

So, what have all these quite extensive reforms resulted in? The bottom line in schooling is always about learning outcomes for the children. But the evidence regarding improvements in this area is very weak, contested and divided. Data from the Annual Status of Education Report (Aser) in the form of large-scale, sample-based testing conducted across all districts in Pakistan, does not show any rising trends in learning outcomes. And there are significant differences in patterns across the provinces as well as graver concerns about learning outcomes in interior Sindh and Balochistan. There is some evidence of improvement in learning outcomes for sample-based tests conducted in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but these improvements are not showing up yet in the larger examinations conducted by the Punjab Examination Commission or the boards.

But, in general, irrespective and/or independent of any trends, all tests show the relatively low level of learning for children on average. Our recent surveys, from three districts in the Punjab, confirm Aser type of results. We also find that when we compare learning levels with comparably aged children from some villages from across the border in India, these are lower in Punjab.

Teacher reforms have been going on for a decade or more now. So, this cannot be just a time lag issue.

There are improvements in enrolment rates, especially at the primary level. Gross enrolment rates at the primary level have gone up significantly. But there are some caveats here too. Middle- and secondary-level enrolment and completion rates have not changed much yet. And, a lot of the enrolment effect, at the primary level over the last couple of decades, can be attributed to the rapid expansion in the provision of private-sector education. In the larger cities now the majority of enrolled children attend private schools.

Teacher attendance in government schools has increased significantly in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Some of this can certainly be attributed to the incentive effects of higher salaries, better pay grades, the induction of a large number of younger, more educated cohorts and, most significantly, to the monitoring and evaluation systems that have been introduced by school education departments. But outside factors have also helped in this regard: over the same period transportation costs, due to a decline in motorcycle prices, have come down sharply in Pakistan. Changes in technology have also brought down monitoring costs.

So, have the reforms been worth the effort? Some of these reforms needed to happen anyway. We needed adjustments in teacher salaries, their grades, recruitment systems and in establishing better monitoring/evaluation systems. Two areas where we have not worked, almost at all, are teacher motivation and in-class teaching/learning dynamics. The limited impact of the reforms so far suggests the need to have better feedback loops and research, and we need to figure out how we can impact student-learning outcomes more.

The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives and an associate professor of economics at Lums, Lahore.

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2018