Education System in Pakistan

How important is education for you? Importance of education can be imagined by Nelson Mandelas saying Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. That is the most powerful weapon that can change the world is “Education”. A nation cannot Progress without improving its education.
What comes in your mind when you hear the term “Education”? It is very difficult to define it. Dewey defines education as “a form of learning in which knowledge, skills, and habits of a group of people are transferred from one generation to the next through teaching, training, research, or simply through auto didacticism” (Dewey, John, (1916)) G. K. Chesterson also argues that” Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” And I feel that it is the most appropriate and comprehensive definition because education is the thing which differentiate two people not money, education tells us the difference between two people. An educated person talks differently, he has more sense to his talk than an uneducated person. The behavior of an educated person is totally different from an uneducated person. “When you know better you do better” (Maya Angelou). In short education defines a human being. What are we without education? Barbarian? We need education to live in this world we cannot survive without education in this rapidly developing and progressing world if we, as Pakistanis, do not get educated we will not survive in this world for long if we need to move with the world we have to move fast and have to get more educated so that we can progress with the world otherwise we will be left behind and like always other people will bully us. So in here I will talk about the education system of our country, Pakistan, its flaws and good aspect of education system of our country.

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If a country has a commendable education system then that country is destined to prosper. Because education teaches a person the meaning of life it teaches a man how to live in this world. In the modern era, one can say that education is one of the most powerful weapons for a nation to conquer any combat and to be a sovereign state. Education is something which differentiates humans from animals. Every person is born with brains but it is education which shows us how to use it and use it to make our life easier and more luxurious for ourselves. “Being an educated person means you have optimal access to your mind regardless of the situation you are in.” (Tarry Malik (2012)) Education helps us understand this world and it teaches us how to make it better not only for ourselves but for the whole world. Education has opened all kinds of doors of enlighten to human kind and shows us the path of progress. It builds the whole society. It enlightens the whole society from the darkness of illiteracy to the light of knowledge. It teaches us discipline. And on the other hand a country cannot progress without improving its education system.
Education has many forms; we can see different types of education in our surroundings. The most common type we observe is the formal education which is obtained in many ways. Our formal education starts from school the education we get from school is called primary education in primary education we learn very basic things like basics of math’s the four operators addition, subtraction ,multiplications and division we only learn the basics of every subject. As said by Henry Fielding “Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality.” Then comes the secondary education in this level of the education we learn basics of some complex subjects like biology and physics. Then comes the intermediate level or commonly known as inter level here we learn the advance but not that advance study of the science and we also learn arts subjects such as Urdu and English up to the level that we can write or read all kind of things. After that comes to the bachelor’s Level where we choose a subject and we learn all about that specific subject like B. A. English. In B. A. English we learn all the grammar and literature of English after the bachelors comes the master level in which we have even more specific field of the topic we choose earlier in the bachelors level and we learn all about that in master level. These are some common phases of education which come into our mind suddenly when we hear the word “Education” and these phases are called formal education. But education is not limited to formal type only; it has a very broad meaning. Apart from this formal type, other is also an informal type of education. Distant learning is one of its parts. Home and society is the most common source of it. Informal education is education which we get from our surrounding and society and from our daily experiences. And we can also get informal education from television and internet too. Informal education is as important as formal education.
In Pakistan presently the institution are following two kinds of education systems, one being private sector and the other government sector. These two sectors cater the needs of the general public. Education system of private sector is more than satisfactory as they provide good teaching staff to their students and the syllabus they teach is also satisfactory. They also provide necessary extracurricular activities to their students. But the real problem is with the public or government sector’s education as they neither have efficient teaching staff nor they have teachers which are well qualified for the job, and I think that is the biggest problem of them all, then the syllabus and the courses are not up to the mark. There are no extracurricular activities in public sector too. Apart from these differences, there is a contrast in teaching style and teacher’s behavior. Teachers are friendlier with their students in private institutes. In these institutes, students are able to learn more with more comfort. On the other hand this type of behavior is not common in public sector. A report published in the
Journal of Human Resources says that “School quality was found to have mixed effects on student achievement. However, in keeping with the estimates of school choice reported in this paper, high pupil-teacher ratios were found to have a uniform negative effect on student achievement, with the effect being particularly pronounced on language skills. This is also consistent with the large negative effect of pupil-teacher ratios on probability of selecting government schools. Finally, private schools were found to have better outcomes than government schools.” (Harold Aldermana Peter F. Orazemb Elizabeth M. Paternoc (2001)). Due to this large difference between these two sectors, a common man cares about his children and do not allow the children to be admitted in the government sector. By admitting their child in private sector, most of the people are more satisfied about the future of their children.
There are some flaws in the education system of Pakistan. We have very few resources to maintain a good structure of our education system. But the good thing is that our government is very committed to take some steps for betterment of education as National Educational Policy says “The Ministry of Education has adopted following vision:
Our education system must provide quality education to our children and youth to enable them to realize their individual potential and contribute to development of society and nation, creating a sense of Pakistani nationhood, the concepts of tolerance, social justice, democracy, their regional and local culture and history based on the basic ideology enunciated in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.” (Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan (2009)) Our government has not enough budgets for education as we are facing some problems in our financial condition. Government is unable to start new schools, colleges and universities so there is a very few number of government institutes in our country so people have to concern with the private institutes to keep their education going, where they have to face heavy expenditure of education. We cannot blame any government for this flaw because as a state we are facing some serious problems regarding our economy; we do not have enough assets and in addition to this, terrorism is also damaging the economy. But the good thing is that government is trying to increase its education budget to fulfill the educational expenditure of the country. So after some time we can have improved our number of resources. Also there is a huge unbalance in number of institutes in rural and urban area. “There are 163,000 primary schools in Pakistan, of which merely 40,000 cater to girls. Of these, 15,000 are in Punjab Province, 13,000 in Sind, 8,000 in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and 4,000 in Baluchistan.” (Aamir Latif, Alarming situation by Aamir Latif ()) Another problem in our system is untrained teachers, here we have no such mechanism by using which we can train the teachers. Because teacher is the one who builds the whole society. So he must be well aware of his responsibilities so that he can cultivate civilized and educated citizens. By organizing a community which teaches the teachers that how to behave and teach and also what to teach, this problem can be resolved. Outdated course is also one the major problem. Our educational experts must be well aware of what is happening in the world regarding to every field so that they can update curricula according to the need of time. Examination system is also facing some problems; in our system, class teacher is all and all as for as examinations are concerned. Papers are completely from the syllabus which teacher has discussed in the class but after middle, papers are made by the different educational boards regardless of what is being taught in different institutes and the communication gap between teachers, students and the respective board causes doubt in student’s mind. By compressing the communication gap, this flaw can be root caused.
As discussed above, government should take some steps to improve the educational system of our country. For example they can start with the increase in the educational budget so they can attract good teachers and can build more schools, colleges and universities. It is very important to make more universities cause there is a lot of students who cannot afford private institutes for their further studies and need government universities to study further but due to small number of government universities some students are forced to leave there studies and they get a job to support their families. The government really needs to update their course and syllabus because it is now out dated and there are a lot of mistakes in books. One of the most annoying thing that they should improve or correct is examination system because exams taken by the government is not really meant to test the grip or concepts of the student it is rather based on the fact that how well the student memorize each and every word that is written in the book. The checking system is also not good as they do not give marks properly as there are so many complaints every year. The teaching style of the teachers is also not so much good as the teaching style of the teacher should be such that it brings out the true talent of the child but here teachers only read the text written in the books not explaining it properly not having different exercises with it which is not good enough.
Apart from flaws there are some very good aspects of our educational system too. The most clear thing is that in spite of lack in resources and new technology, our system is not only working but one can assure that it is progressing and getting successful to educate the people of Pakistan. Which is clear by the figures “During 2005-06, literacy rate for all adults of 15 years and above rose to 51.7% & 53.5% during 2007-08 and for young adults (aged 15-24 years) to 67% in 2005-06 & 68% in 2007-08. Both these rates show improvements from their 2001-02 levels, of 43% and 62% respectively.” (Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan (2009))
So, as I had said that education is very important for every one we should encourage everyone to obtain it because it helps us live in this world it is the reason that westerns are so far ahead of us in every aspect of life. Until we do not get educated we cannot help our country or show our country the path of development and progress the only way Pakistan can progress is with the help of educated people which we lack a lot. So our government should pay special attention towards the development of the educational system of our country so that we can produce more educated people in Pakistan. It is not only government’s responsibility to improve the educational system of Pakistan it is our responsibility too to make the educational system of Pakistan more efficient and more effective.