MODERN and quality education has become a distant dream for students of Balochistan due to outdated textbooks and obsolete syllabus. Textbooks published in the 1990s are still in use and have never been updated despite several changes. Students are forced to learn ‘facts’ that are no longer true and concepts that are no longer applicable.

The books provided by the Balochistan Textbook Board are full of factual and linguistic errors. Besides, they are unnecessarily lengthy and, therefore, their contents cannot be covered within a course of seven to eight months. As a result, students find it challenging to prepare for tests and some of them resort to unfair means to pass examinations.

Another major problem is that all the books, from primary school to matriculation, are in Urdu, which is in contrast to the intermediate level when students have to study several subjects in English. How can the students be expected to learn from English books all at once when they have been taught in Urdu for so many years?

On its part, the Balochistan Textbook Board faces an uphill battle to revise the curriculum. Some of the notable challenges include its limited capacity, a lack of coordination among different stakeholders, no interest on the part of teachers in developing textbooks, and the absence of effective evaluation and quality checks.

The relevant authorities should look into the matter on an urgent basis. The least they can do is to fix the textbooks riddled with mistakes, reduce the number of pages and print revised editions.

Ahsanullah Mengal
Hub

Published in Dawn, February 2nd, 2022