LAHORE: Nationalisation in Pakistan ended up weakening educational institutions, in particular Church institutions, and triggered a downslide of the standard of education in general.

Even after the nationalisation policy of 1972 was changed in 1984 entailing a partial denationalisation till 2003-04, it continued to drain resources and squeezed the potential to equalise, and also limited opportunities.

This was claimed in a research study authored by historian Dr Tahir Kamran and Peter Jacob, titled ‘Lessons from the Nationalisation of Education in 1972’.The study was launched by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) and carried out by Rt Rev Irfan Jamil, the Bishop of Lahore, and Dr Fr Bonnie Mendes.

The key findings of the study were that as of June, only 50 per cent schools had been denationalised from the 118 in Punjab and Sindh. Two out of the five colleges nationalised were still under government control, excluding Edwardes College in Peshawar, which was taken over by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government in 2019. Around 25pc of the Catholic Church’s schools were yet to be denationalised, while the Presbyterian Church got back the management and building of 57pc of its schools.

In Sindh, 72.73pc schools and all colleges had been denationalised whereas in Punjab, out of 97 nationalised schools, only 43.59pc had been returned to the churches.

Priscilla Lall, a teacher from the Kinnaird College for Women, confirmed the findings of the study from her own PhD thesis, which looked at the same issue. She added that one of the long-term impacts of nationalisation was a fear among the Christian community as well as on educational institutions of the country.

Dr Kamran underlined that in post-colonial societies, education always remained a tool for the government, but “we cannot deny that missionary schools were the best model of educational institutions in Pakistan”. However, he added, this policy adversely affected the spirit the missionaries brought into the education system.

He stressed that it was impossible to separate freedom from education. Building national unity and integration was possible only by embracing people’s diverse religious and cultural significance.

Dr Yaqoob Bangash, who wrote the foreword of the study, said it was a well-established fact that following two decades of Bhutto’s nationalisation, even the remaining Christian schools and colleges had not been able to offer the same quality of education as before, mainly because the policy cut off the global link and removed the top leadership that used missionary approach and spirit in the educational institutions.

Mr Jacob announced that in order to bring this issue to the table for productive engagement, his organisation, CSJ, aimed to share the research publication with provincial and federal education departments and the textbook boards.

Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2020