A committee formed by Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah is to review the Sindh School Education Standards and Curriculum (SSES&C) Law 2015 and has been tasked with offering suggestions and recommendations making amendments to improve the public education system in province.
Fifteen hundred students graduating in various educational courses were officially conferred degrees as the University of Management and Technology Lahore held its 14th convocation ceremony on Tuesday, November 14.
Universities around the world are melting pots of cultures, ideologies and varied opinions and the breeding grounds for debate on issues and challenges faced by the world at any given time. They are also key platforms for the youth to develop understanding of the world beyond the curricular and pedagogical perimeters as they provide various avenues for discussions, both in and out of classrooms.
Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Wednesday formally inaugurated Gilgit-Baltistan University, making way for the second institute of higher education in the heavenly region.
The three-week-long tensions between students and administration of Pakistan’s top ranked seat of higher learning, Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU), came to a rather sad end on Monday with a massive – and violent – crackdown on protesters by law enforcement agencies. Dozens of students were arrested and stuffed into police vans to make way for resumption of classes at the university, which did resume in a sombre environment on Tuesday.
Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah seems to be allocating a lot of his time to the education sector in the province.
Pakistan was placed 125th out of 130 countries studied by the World Economic Forum for its Global Human Capital Development Report 2017. Let that sink. One hundred and twenty fifth of a total 130 countries. As appalling as it is, the country’s rank becomes even more worrisome when one considers the nations that managed to fare better than ours. Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Lesotho, Chad and Liberia were among the countries that ranked higher than Pakistan.
Many of these countries are far poorer than Pakistan and have been ravaged by civil wars for years at a stretch. However, The World Economic Forum (WEF) report says the development of human capital in these remained more impressive than in Pakistan.
According to WEF, the Human Capital Index 2017 studied 130 countries to gauge how “well they are developing their human capital on a scale from 0 (worst) to 100 (best) across four thematic subindexes—Capacity, Deployment, Development and Know-how—and five distinct age groups or generations—0–14 years; 15–24 years; 25–54 years; 55–64 years; and 65 years and over.
The comprehensive study was undertaken to measure the complete human capital potential profile of a country and researchers claim it can be “used as a tool to assess progress within countries and points to opportunities for cross-country learning and exchange”. The capacity sub-index measured the percentage of population that has “achieved at least primary, (lower) secondary or tertiary education, respectively, and the proportion of the population that has a basic level of literacy and numeracy”. The deployment sub-index measured how many people are able to participate actively in the workforce, while the know-how score measured the “breadth and depth of specialized skills use at work”. Development sub-index took stock of “formal education of the next-generation workforce and continued upskilling and reskilling of the current workforce”.
Pakistan performed rather poorly in all these sub-indices. It was ranked 111th for capacity, 123rd for both deployment and development, while it fared marginally better, 96th, than its neighbours for know-how.
The median age of Pakistan’s population is 22.5 years, making the county one of youngest among the comity of nations. China’s median age in comparison is 39 years, while Japan’s is 46.3. Political sermons and talk show debates make us believe that the young population makes Pakistan ready for an economic take-off. Sadly, the youth cannot enable that flight without the requisite know-how, skills and capacity. An alarming statistic from the same report points to a greater problem. WEF estimates that the median years of education the Pakistani population receives is 4.6 years. Just 4.6 years! Contrarily, its 12.5 years for Japan and 12 years for Norway, the top ranked country in the index.
The reasons for the paltry average schooling median of 4.6 for Pakistan are many; limited access to schools, poor in-school facilities, departmental corruption, parent attitude towards education, especially girls’, substandard training of teachers and economic hardships of families making way for a high dropout rate from schools etc. But the primary reason for the sorry state of affairs of our country’s human capital has to be a serious lack of an educational vision at the policy level. Education and its provision have never remained a priority. For evidence, we need not go much further than the fact that a vast majority of our population still believes education does no good. In more than 65 years of its existence, the state hasn’t been able to make the idea of education being important dawn upon its subjects, let alone making available the facilities that enable every child to get an education.
The focus of successive governments for many years has remained on projects that are visible to a wider audience. Carpeting of roads, construction of overhead bridges, metro bus services; tangible proofs of work done. Such projects have been portrayed as evidences of the country’s progress. And the purported progress is manifest in the WEF index.
The report highlighted that the human capital potential of Pakistan was “held back by insufficient educational enrolment rates and poor-quality primary schools”. In the National Plan of Action 2013-2016, it was proposed that public spending on education would be taken up to 4% of the GDP. Like other goals, this was missed as well and Pakistan’s current public spending on education is estimated at 2.6% of GDP. Norway spends 7.4% of its GDP on education, and even Yemen, the lowest ranked in the index, spends 5.1% of GDP on education.
So the next time you hear someone saying Pakistan is on way to becoming an economic giant, remind them of the pitiable state your fellow countrymen are in with respect to human development.
There is still time before the youth bulge we like to brag about turns into a cancerous tumour. If only someone does something about it.
The historic Government College Hyderabad in Sindh province has been elevated to the rank of a university by Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah. The chief minister made the announcement while addressing the centennial celebrations of the college’s foundation.
A former student recalls how teachers provided important skills that made the pupil survive the demands of life, he writes a letter to teachers.
Dear Sirs/Madams/Teachers,
It’s been well over a decade since I last saw any of you. “Good riddance,” were the words I uttered the last time I walked out of the university. And boy, was I wrong. You see, no matter how much I rejoice getting rid of your monstrous assignments, mind-bending quizzes, petrifying shaming during presentations and your stern refusal to give in to my pleas for improved grades; I really, really miss you.
I want that monstrosity back, I want to return to that mind bending-ness, I crave for that shaming and I want to be on my knees, pleading, again. They say you value things the most once they are taken away from you, and I think the saying has caught up with me too.
So, without further ado, I’ll say it straight. Dear Teachers, I thank you for the love, I thank you for the guidance and I thank you for the advice. But more importantly, I thank you for the grind. I thank you for the ordeal, and I thank you for the agony.
I am really grateful for all those assignments, for without a go at them, I wouldn’t have survived a day in the real world. My mind wouldn’t have learned to sustain burdens and my nerves would have crumbled every time I thought of submissions.
Dear Sir, I am grateful for those unannounced quizzes, for without them I wouldn’t have learned to contain unforeseen catastrophes. I couldn’t have risen to the occasion each time an unanticipated threat arose and I couldn’t have learned to utilize resources to the best of my benefit.
Dear Madam, I thank you for that humiliation in that presentation, for without it I would never have known that a beating once in a while is alright. I would never have learned the way to rein in emotions or to take one on the chin and move on. It taught me setbacks were okay.
Dear Miss, I am grateful for the backbreaking projects, for it is there where I learnt not to fear the unknown. Without them, I couldn’t have learned to be brave and I would never have known the satisfaction of making a dedicated attempt. Without you, I would never have known instinct, I wouldn’t have learned to trust intuition.
Dear Teacher, I thank you for those grueling exams. It was during those that I learnt crucial survival skills like concentration, time management, pressure handling and maintaining mental calm under stress.
Dear Professor, I am extremely humbled by your critique, for without it I wouldn’t have tried to be better. I could never have known what ‘digging deeper’ meant and would never have endeavored to do more than I could. I would have remained ordinary, but for you.
Over these past few years, I have become increasingly grateful for your teachings, humility, forbearance and commitment. Grateful that you bore with me, cared to instruct me despite my antics and remained generous despite my callousness. I wish I realized your greatness back then. I wish I could tell you in person.
Thank you, teachers. To you, I owe my world.
So goes the saying. In fact teaching is one of the hardest jobs that come around. Entering a class full of boisterous youth, holding the attention of their wandering minds and replacing random thoughts with invaluable knowledge takes a lot of effort. That is why teachers leave some of the most remarkable impressions on our lives.