ISLAMABAD - Challenging the current ways through which the state is addressing the education crisis, the speakers outlined the need for new approaches to fix the broken system.
These views were expressed at an event entitled 'DisruptEd - Ideas and Conversations for Disruptive Innovation in Pakistan' that was organised by Alif Ailaan -- an educational campaign funded by Department for International Development (DfID) -- along with a host of government, private and non-government organisations. The event highlighted that Pakistan had not been successful in marshalling its resources for reforms or change.
"Ours society is characterised by great disparities in income, education and opportunity. Nearly half of our country's children are not in schools and getting them there is a Herculean challenge," said Ahsan Iqbal, federal minister for planning, development and reform, on the occasion. "The role of technology and innovation in such a scenario is imperative to the way we deliver education not only to children but also to the society as a whole," he said.
Participants agreed that new avenues to deal with education problem must be explored and implemented to change how the crisis was perceived and addressed by the state and other stakeholders.
"Without a 'disruption' to the way things are, a fundamental change that alters the very basics, there is little chance of Pakistan being able to deal with the education crisis," said Mosharraf Zaidi, team leader of Alif Ailaan.
"None of the major problems in education, be it low enrolment rates, poor quality, lack of accountability and the total absence of a robust discourse, can be solved without bold new approach. We need to stimulate thinking in the public, private and non-profit sectors about solutions to these problems," he said.
Currently, 25 million children in Pakistan are out of school. Of these, about six million have never seen the inside of a classroom. The rest have enrolled at one point, only to drop out, most likely within the first three years of enrolling at the age of five. Speakers at the event emphasised that the use of technology can help improve the provision of education to remote areas and disrupt current practices of supplying education. It was argued that content developers had failed so far to fully exploit the potential of 2G technology and hence and the introduction of 3G technology might not disrupt the supply of education as envisioned.
Sheikh Ijaz, an MPA from Faisalabad, was featured as one of the disruptors of education within the political realm. "I believe education can only be fixed if parliamentarians and politicians truly take ownership of the system," he said. "By enrolling my own children into a government school, I have developed a better understanding of the challenges faced by schools and our system of education as a whole. This has enabled me to tackle these issues in a more effective way."
There is a broad understanding of the critical situation of the educational emergency as well as the appetite for quality education. The substandard state of schools, however, has made parents reluctant to send their children to school. With reduced elite preference for public schooling, the standard of education within the public sector has fallen profusely.
"There are serious issues in terms of capacity and misplaced priorities of the government in the improvement of the standard of public sector schools," said Asad Umer, an MNA of PTI. "While the private sector presents a dramatic increase in the provision of quality education, its accessibility and affordability remain limited for the masses. The government needs to adopt a single schooling system across the board to remove discrimination in the educations system," he suggested.
It was highlighted at the event that teachers played a vital role as disruptors of the current substandard teaching practices, particularly through the use of pedagogy and technology. However, it was also felt that teaching quality could not be substantially improved through reliance on technological innovations. "We cannot improve the teaching quality solely by relying upon technology," said Dr Mohammad Sabieh of the Khwarizmi Science Society.