A rapid expansion in public sector education has addressed the issue of access and equity to some extent, however, the quality of education has been neglected. The shocking findings of the National Education Assessment System-2007 reveal that students of grade five and eight in core curriculum areas performed below average.

The Annual Status of Education Report-2012 reveals that every second child completes primary education without acquiring class two level reading skills; 52 per cent of students of class five cannot read class two level English sentences, and only 44pc students are able to do three-digit division sums. The Alif Ailaan-2013 Report based on educational rankings of provinces/territories and districts have depicted a further alarming situation of the education system.

The continuous poor performance of our education system rings an alarm bell. The National Education Policy-2009 also previously expressed its dissatisfaction with the state of the education system. Various initiatives have been launched over the years, such as declaring the year 2011 as ‘Pakistan Year of Education’ to demonstrate political will and the government’s commitment to education.

In addition, there is the introduction of the National School Curriculum-2006, establishment of national education assessment system along with provincial education assessment centres, formation of Pakistan Education Task Force-2009 to assist the provincial governments in developing a plan for effective implementation of policy initiatives, devolution of education to provinces through the 18th Amendment and many, many more such moves. However, these initiatives have not yet made a substantial contribution to access, gender parity and quality education.

Although the falling standard of education is not an issue only of Pakistan, it has emerged as a global issue. Today, Finland, North Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Canada, the United States of America and Shanghai have emerged as the world’s best education systems and we need to learn from their experiences for improving our own education system. The McKinsey & Company Report-2007 indicates that three factors contributed towards making the world’s top school systems. These include getting the right people to become teachers, developing them into effective instructors and ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child. This suggests that a teacher is a linchpin of any education system and his/her efforts can lead towards making the best education system.

In the past, our teachers had produced successful academics, intellectuals, reformists, scientists, politicians, industrialists and business people, whereas today’s teachers are failing to follow in their predecessors’ footprints despite being highly qualified on paper with good salary packages. They seem to acutely lack a sense of professionalism, moral purpose of education, commitment and resilience. They either spend little quality time on teaching or remain absent from their schools.

To draw a distinction between the teachers of past and present, the past teachers were professionally competent pedagogues and enlightened practitioners who were concerned about their students’ overall development. They were considered knowledge producers and creators of best practices/pedagogies who added value to the teaching profession by constantly striving to raise the standards of education.

In addition, they were role models for their students and earned respect from the society. They were also more interested in ‘academic gains’ rather than ‘financial gains’. They saw the success of their students as their own success. We hardly find such attributes in our present teaching force.

Due to lack of such attributes and interest in the majority of today’s teachers, our schools have become ‘barren’ places and the students in turn have suffered. Ghost schools and ghost teachers have further destroyed the reputation and image of the teaching profession. School heads, education supervisors and district education managers hardly play their role in improving schools for enhancing student learning outcomes. Students with top positions in public examination perform poorly in admission tests of high-quality professional institutions.

In this regard, the Federal/Provincial Public Service Commission reports seem to be an ‘eye-opener’ for civil society. Even parents from low socio-economic backgrounds prefer to send their children to private schools rather than to the government schools which offer education free of cost. The main cities have become the hub of private tuition centres which indicate that students are not gaining enough through schooling to prepare themselves for examination which focuses on assessing students’ rote learning capacity.

Our education system has suffered from bad governance, politicisation of education system, ill-preparation of teachers, non-committed teachers, lack of clinical supervision, narrow focus of curriculum, ineffective pedagogies, traditional assessment practices, lack of enabling learning environment and professionalism, and donor dependency culture, etc.

These factors have turned our education system into a serious ‘education crisis’. However, there are a few ‘pockets of success’ mainly in the private sector but our public sector education system has not been agile enough to adapt new ideas for improvement.

In order to deal with the ‘education crisis’, the following policy actions need to be taken as a priority:

• Restructuring the education system for creating efficiency through improved governance, management and accountability.

• De-politicising the education system through legislation to eliminate political interference.

• Empowering school heads with educational management and leadership skills for managing schools effectively.

• Inducting bright graduates into the teaching profession.

• Re-conceptualising teachers’ role as ‘social change agents’, and ‘enlightened reflective practitioners’.

• Creating collaboration between academia and bureaucracy for developing informed policy and practices.

• Leveraging public-private partnership for developing institutional capacity including research, ICT-supported learning, teaching, etc.

• Developing a quality assurance framework for maintaining the standards of education.

• Improving the learning environment for engaging students with learning to improve their critical and creative thinking, social and problem-solving skills.

• Introducing teacher licensing to enhance professionalism among teachers.

• Strengthening internal/external school inspection for effective monitoring.

• Mobilising community for maximisation of education benefits.

• Developing need-based support to high performing districts, middle performing districts and low performing districts.

• Increasing education budget and its allocation based on school performance.

There is no magic wand and nor is the above list an exhaustive prescription for improving the quality of education, however, we need to start with a premise that ‘less is more’ which can help our education system come out of the ‘education crisis’ before it becomes too late!

The writer is a professor and former director of Aga Khan University, Institute for Educational Development, Karachi